prevent your succeeding.' Such conduct was just what was
to be expected on the part of the slaveholders. They saw these men
coming among their slaves, and where they could not appeal to their
judgments, endeavoring to speak to the eyes of the black population by
prints, representing their masters, harsh and cruel. It was not
surprising that such unwise conduct should beget a bitter feeling of
opposition among the inhabitants of the Southern states. They
themselves knew too well the critical nature of their position, and
the dangers of tampering with the passions of the black population.
Let him who doubted go to the Southern states, and he would learn that
those harsh laws, in regard to slavery, which had been so much
condemned, were passed immediately after some of those insurrections,
those spasmodic efforts of the slaves to free themselves by violence,
which could never end in good, and which the conduct of the
abolitionists was calculated continually to renew. They ought to take
these things into account when they heard statements made about the
strong excitement against the abolitionists. He would repeat what he
had before stated, that the cause of emancipation had been ruined by
that small party with which Mr. Thompson had identified himself: but
to whose chariot wheels he trusted the people of this country would
never suffer themselves to be bound.

* * * * *

MR. GEORGE THOMPSON said, the work he had to do in reference to the
last speech was by no means great or difficult. They had heard a great
many things stated by Mr. Breckinridge on the great question in
debate, but every one of these had been stated a thousand times
before, and answered again and again within the last sixty years.
Within these very walls they had heard many of them brought forward
and refuted within the last four years. But there was one part of his
opponent's speech to which he would reply with emphasis. And he could
not but confess that he had listened to that one part of it with
surprise. He knew Mr. Breckinridge to be the advocate of gradual
emancipation; he (Mr. Thompson) had therefore come prepared to hear
all the arguments employed by the gradualists, urged in the ablest
manner, but he had not been prepared to hear from that gentleman's
lips the things he had heard--he did not expect that the foul charge
of stirring up a mob against Mr. Breckinridge for advocating the
principles of colonization, would