asserted that the best conditioned of the free negroes there were worse off than the most abject slave in the West Indies, and that the happiest free man there was more miserable than the most wretched slave in Jamaica. I tell him it is a falsehood,-and he knows it. (Tremendous cheers.) He knows it to be a base, fabricated falsehood. I know not whether it was sent to him from St. James's; but if his employers so informed him, let him tell them that they have been furnishing him with lies. What, I now ask, constitutes a man's happiness? Is it herrings, yams, plantains, horse-beans, or a horse-whip? No! If he dares to reiterate his assertion respecting Sierra Leone, he shall have the whole history of that colony. (Hear, hear.) He says that the slaves should have religious instruction,-and that is an argument also which is continually in the mouth of the Marquis of Chandos; but let him tell me if there is one single instructor of Christianity on the Marquis of Chandos's estates in the West Indies?

I implore you to look at the other side of the question— the danger of delaying emancipation. Can the West India islands be in a worse condition than now prevails? Colored men are butchered, without the semblance of a trial-the frame-work of society is dissolving, and chaos is coming again. If we do not graut emancipation, they will liberate themselves. I shall conclude my reply with the remarks of a great man now deceased. He says,

Shame! that any should have been found to speak lightly of liberty, whose worth is so testified-whose benefits are so numerous and so rich. Moralists have praised it-poets have sung it--the Gospel has taught and breathed it-patriots an I-martyrs have died for it. As a temporal blessing, it is beyond all comparison and above all praise. It is the air we breathethe food we eat-the raiment that clothes us-the sun that enlightens, and vivifies, and gladdens, all on whom it shines. Without it, what are honors and riches, and all similar endowments? They are the trappings of a hearse -they are the garnishings of a sepulchre; and with it the crust of bread, and the cup of water, and the lowly hovel, and the barren rock, are luxuries which it teaches and enables us to rejoice in. He who knows what liberty is, and can be glad and happy when placed under a tyrant's rule, and at the disposal of a tyrant's caprice, is like the man who can laugh and be in merry mood at the grave, where he has just deposited all that should have been loveliest in his eye, and all that should have been dearest to his heart. What is slavery, and what does it do? It darkens and degrades the intellect-it paralyses the hand of industry-it is the nourisher of agonizing fears and of sullen revenge-it crushes the spirit of the bold-it belies the doctrines, it contradicts the precepts, it resists the power, it sets at defiance the sanctions of religion-it is the tempter, and the murderer, and the tomb of virtue-and

either blasts the felicity of those over whom it domineers, or forces them to seek for relief from their sorrows in the gratifications, and the mirth, and the madness of the passing hour.'

This extract is from the pen of the late Dr. Andrew Thompson, of Edinburgh.

Having now occupied your attention for three hours and twenty minutes, I beg once more, for the fifth time, most cordially to express to you my thanks for the attention which have afforded to me. you I have explained the nature of the emancipation we seek; and the safety and justice of emancipation; the advantage of a system of free, in preference to one of compulsory labor.

All that I ask is liberty for the captive; a release from arbitrary and irresponsible control-and that he should henceforth be governed by equal laws-administered by judicial and responsible officers.

Let it no longer be objected, that we are surrounded by miserable and starving beings at home, and therefore ought to confine our attention within the circle of our own neighborhood. Let ours be a more enlarged philanthropy, which, while it forgets not the object which is near, goes out after the wretched children of oppression, now groaning for help in the Colonies. Far be it from me to be an unmoved spectator of the ills of those immediately around me; but while I gaze upon the most abject of the inhabitants of this island, I cannot help remembering that here the cup of misery goes round, and he who drinks it to-day, passes it to another to-morrow. The starving and the houseless of to-day are not the starving and houseless of to-morrow. Here hope animates all-the wheel of fortune is ever revolving-the scene is ever shifting, and the eye that weeps to-day, may sparkle with joy to-morrow. I only ask that this may be the condition of the slave—that he may exchange a state of abject slavery, in which his labor is exacted by the whip, for a state of naked freedom, in which, under the influence of the ordinary motives which stimulate men, he may become a cheerful and industrious peasant; a skilful artizan; or, an enterprising merchant. And shall I ask in vain? Shall I this night, appearing as I do, the advocate of 800,000 human beings to whom we owe a migty debt, crave in vain the blessing of homeless-pennyless FREEDOM. It is impossi

ble! the appeal to MEN to ENGLISHMEN, and to CHRISTIANS, cannot be ineffectual.

I have done. Once more let me thank you for this lengthened attention, and assure you, that I shall be ready to hear what more my opponent can say in defence of slavery, and should he fail to convince me, you may consider me pledged to give a second refutation, and to do again what I trust I have done to night-scatter to the winds of heaven the sophistries by which it is sought to uphold a system which insults the God of heaven, and degrades His image upon earth.

74

MR. THOMPSON'S LECTURE.

Report of the Protestings of the meetings of Messrs. Tuoma 10 and Bertrick is at the Royal Amphitheatre, Liverpool, on the Evenings of August 2, 29. 30. 31. and Septrainer 6, 152-From & Supplement of the Lizer god Times.

It was announced last week, that MR. GEORGE THOMP sox, one of the advocates of the Anti-Slavery Societies, who has been lectoring in London, Manchester, and sereral other places, on the evils of slavery, would deliver a lecture on the same subject, at the Royal Amphitheatre, in this town, a place admirably suited, by its extent and accommodations, for the thousands who might naturally be expected to assemble together on a question of such vital interest and importance. We seldom remember to have seen so much interest excited on any subject, as has been exhibited by our townsmen within the last few days. As it was deemed desirable that both sides of the question should be laid before the public, after some negotiation between the West India body and the committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, it was arranged that Mr. Thompson should lecture on Tuesday evening; that Mr. Borthwick should speak on Wednesday, on the opposite side; that Mr. Thompson should be heard in reply on Thursday,— and that the admission on all the three nights should be by tickets, equally distributed by both parties, in order to secure a select assemblage, and prevent, as far as possible, the recurrence of those scenes of clamor and tumult which have taken place elsewhere. Upwards of 8,000 tickets were so distributed, and even then, almost up to the time of the meeting the greatest anxiety was exhibited to procure them, and hundreds of persons who applied were obliged to go away disappointed. At half past six

on Tuesday night, the hour fixed for the commencement of the proceeding, the Amphitheatre was crowded in every part, from the pit to the gallery, with a numerous and most respectable assemblage, the speaker, and several gentlemen of both committees, taking their station on the stage, where ample accommodations was provided for them, and for the gentlemen connected with the press.

- With these few introductory remarks, we shall proceed to our summary report of the discussion.

MR. ADAM HODGSON, in taking the chair, said he felt himself called to a situation of great delicacy and difficulty, being, on the one hand, a member of the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Society, and on the other, and in some degree, the representative of the West Indian body,-bound to secure a fair and impartial hearing for both parties, without any reference to his own individual feelings and sentiments, which had been long before the public, and which nothing could induce him to abandon. He should endeavor to perform the duties of his station with firmness and impartiality, trusting to the support of the meeting; and he hoped that both parties would behave with the utmost order and decorum, abstaining from all manifestations of applause and disapprobation, and remembering that no cause whatever could be served by clamor, but might be materially injured by it. (Hear, hear.) After some further observations to the same effect, Mr. Hodgson concluded by saying that Mr. Borthwick would reply to Mr. Thompson, from the same place, on the following night, and by requesting for that gentleman the same patient and attentive hearing as that which he solicited for Mr. Thompson.

MR. G. THOMPSON then came forward, and said that, after an absence of twenty years from his native town, he trusted that he would not be deemed altogether a stranger where he appeared as an advocate of the great cause he was called upon to plead, and that, as an Englishman and fellow-townsman, he would not be denied a calm, patient, and attentive hearing. He did not come to discuss the wonders of the heavens or the beauties of the earth, or to lecture upon any subject of science, nature or art, such as those to which other lecturers had called their attention; it was his painful and responsible duty to lay before them a