ours.. A. Jaugh.) If; (said Mr. Borthwick, addressing the meeting, you were slaves, would you wish to be free to-morrow? (Cries of Yes, yes,' and a great uproar.) Before any one could take it upon him to answer that question he must first know the condition of the slave. It was this. He is provided for in sickness and in old age. If you make him free you deprive him of these advantages. Instances could be quoted in which slaves being made free, had requested to be taken back into a state of slavery. (Disapprobation.) Who hisses? exclaimed Mr. Borthwick, I am only stating a fact. (Name, name.) He would name Mr. Senior, who was for many years an overseer in Trinidad, and was now a resident of Liverpool. He could prove that six negroes being made free, entreated that they might be taken back as they had no one to provide for them; and one of them pathetically said, 'If we die, who will make our coffin.' If it were once proved that the slaves wished to be free, then it would be right to emancipate them. But it had not yet been proved to be for the benefit of the slaves themselves. How did Christianity abolish slavery in England and elsewhere? By the gradual, meek, and gentle progress which had marked its course all over the world. Christianity does not take the heart by storm. She is beautiful and God-like in her march. What better evidence could they have of the divinity of Christianity than the change which had taken place in England from the time of her first introduction. He would point to the good effects which Christianity had produced in the West Indies during the last twenty-five years, since the abolition of that foul traffic which the planters had been the first to decry-the slave trade. A great change had taken place in the condition of the slaves, and to what was it to be attributed? To Christianity, under the fostering, nursing, able, and willing protection of the slave masters. Due discrimination was no doubt necessary as to the persons who were to teach the slaves.Would it not be absurd in a person to attempt to lecture on Homer who knew nothing about Greek? It was necessary, therefore, for the planters to see that the persons who came to teach Christianity should know something of its nature and history, and should, in fact, be learned theological scholars. The only men who were refused

permission to teach the slaves and read the confessions of Linton and other convicted leaders in the rebellion, to show that the negroes had been misled by the publications of the Anti-Slavery Society, and particularly by the Baptist Missionaries, into the belief that the Lord and the King had given their freedom, but that it was kept from them by the white gentlemen in Jamaica. The Baptist preachers had taught the slaves that they could not serve two masters. You see from this, (said Mr. Borthwick) that the insurrection had its foundation in religion: (great disapprobation) he meant in a perversion of religion. The rebellious slaves indulged not only in cruelties to their masters; but the most horrid cruelties were perpetrated on English women, young, fair and good, as the youngest, the fairest and the best now before him. These cruelties were practised, hear the word, (exclaimed Mr. Borthwick,) and hiss not! (much laughter) by leaders in the Baptist churches. (Hear, and cries of No, no,' followed by prodigious uproar.) When order was restored, Mr. Borthwick proceeded to read the examinations of the gentlemen on the island, and to refer more minutely to the confessions of the slaves in support of his accusation against the Baptists. It was alleged that the ringleaders among the revolted negroes took the same rank in the rebel army as they held in the Baptist church. Mr Borthwick denounced the missonaries as ignorant or interested men. (Renewed uproar.) The scenes of the rebellion proved, either that the Baptist Missionaries were incompetent to explain the scriptures, or that the negro was incapable of understanding them, when the simple declaration of our Lord respecting the serving of two masters had been so grossly perverted. In the latter supposition the negro was clearly unfit for freedom. Mr. Borthwick then alluded to the motives of the missionaries in going to Jamaica, and denied that they were entitled to the praise of disinterestedness. He also quoted the confession of one of the converted rebels, that if they had all the money they had given to Mr. Burchell, they would have had something handsome. It was unfair in Mr. Thompson to say that the planters opposed all instruction, because they objected to the Baptists. They did not object to the Wesleyans or the Moravians, or to the missionaries from the Established

Churches of England and Scotland. The Rev. George Blyth, a Scotch missionary, who was now in Edinburgh, had published a letter in the Liverpool Mercury, in which he stated that he found no obstruction in teaching the negroes, and that the proprietor of a mill had caused it to stop for half an hour, while he addressed the slaves. He (Mr. Borthwick) put the question to any man who had been in the West Indies, whether, if he asked a slave, do you want your freedom, he would not receive an answerNo, Massa, me no want any more.' Free labor was cheaper than slave labor, and it was therefore the interest of the master to promote emancipation; but as there was no poor laws, it was inconsistent with the views he (Mr. T.) had given of humanity and religion to grant immediate emancipation. From the state of starvation, described by Mr. Thompson, they would fall into complete destitution, and from a state of comparative ignorance they would relapse into total barbarism. In St. Domingo, when it was a slave colony, the export of sugar had been very considerable, but since free labor was introduced they were actually obliged to import sugar for their own consumption. The free slave of St. Domingo was decidedly inferior in mental attainments to the negro in a state of slavery. This proved, he trusted, that instead of conferring a moral or religious boon on the slave by giving him emancipation, they were conferring a moral infliction that drove him back to the state of barbarism in which he existed in his native land. After some further observations, Mr. Borthwick said, that now the question was fairly before them, they would perceive it was not a question between immediate emancipation and perpetual bondage, as the planters wished for the emancipation of the slave as soon as it could be granted with safety. He had not time to enter on the question of emancipation. But he might ask who would compensate the negro? Would the Anti-Slavery Society do so? When he said that the planters were the best friends of the slave, he referred in proof of the fact to the abolition of the slave trade, to the slave acts of Jamaica and other islands, and to the contributions of money for the instruction of the slave. The chief anti-slavery advocates who had been possessed of slaves did not emancipate them, but sold them, and pocketed the hard

cash. (Loud applause.) Tell me not, continued Mr. Borthwick, of the Jamaica cart-whips. They are nothing at all! Mr. Thompson had said that one of them laid open the flank of a mule. He would give Mr. Thompson a challenge. He would give him liberty to lay open the calf of his (Mr. Borthwick's) leg with a Jamaica cartwhip, on condition that if he failed he should pay out of the funds of the Anti-Slavery Society, to the public charities of the town, the sum of £200. (Tremendous cheering and laughter.) Mr. Borthwick concluded by thanking the meeting for the attention with which they had heard him, and by soliciting the same attention for his opponent on the following evening.

Mr. Borthwick's address lasted three hours and twentyfive minutes.

MR. THOMPSON'S REPLY.

MR. THOMPSON made his reply to Mr. Borthwick on Thursday night, at the Amphitheatre, to a most numerous and respectable audience.

SAMUEL HOPE, Esq. was called to the chair.

MR. THOMPSON commenced by observing that never had a speech been delivered so completely vulnernable in all its parts-a speech more disgraceful to the heart as well as to the head of the man who spoke it, than that delivered by Mr. Borthwick, the agent of the West India body, on the preceding evening. He meant nothing personal to Mr. Borthwick in this observation; he merely alluded to the speech, and that was his property-Mr. Borthwick had given it to him, and he had a right to tear it limb from limb. (Applause and hisses.) Mr. Borthwick complained heavily of being charged with having uttered what he knew to be a falsehood, and the meeting should see how the charge was made out. Mr. Borthwick asserted, in Manchester, that the happiest of the happy, amongst the free negroes in Sierra, Leone, was more miserable than the most miserable slave that breathed in the West Indies; and was not such an assertion as that a most gross and evident falsehod on the very face of it? ('Yes, yes,'— 'No, no!'-Cheers and disapprobation.) He would again and again aver that the statement was a falsehood-since it was contrary to history, contrary to observation, contrary to human nature, reason, and common sense. [Applause.] In speaking of the frightful decrease in the slave population, he had referred to Parliamentary documents to prove the truth of what he advanced, and then Mr. Borthwick turned round upon him and questioned the truth of those documents, though Mr. Borthwick well knew that they were founded on returns furnished by his friends, the planters, on oath. What was that but charging the planters with perjury? ['No, no,'-'Yes, yes.'] Those documents proved a decrease amongst the slaves of 52,000 in