(74) MR. THOMPSON'S LECTURE. Report of the Proceedings at the meetings of Messrs. Thompson and Borthwick held at the Royal Amphitheatre, Liverpool, on the Evenings of August 28, 29, 30, 31, and September 6, 1832.-From a Supplement of the Liverpool Times. Ir was announced last week, that MR. GEORGE THOMP SON, one of the advocates of the Anti-Slavery Societies, who has been lecturing in London, Manchester, and several 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 theme of sorrow, of misery, want, woe, and degradation,of injustice, cruelty and oppression, as exhibited in the history, progress, and principles, and character of British colonial slavery; to point out the actual condition of 800,000 human beings now in a state of degrading bondage; and to ascertain what it was their duty, as Englishmen and as Christians, to do on this great and momentous question. That question was simply, whether, in the year 1832, there was justice enough, courage enough, piety enough, in the British nation, to declare, at once and for ever, that the system of slavery should be abolished,—a question involving the interests and welfare of all men who were held in slavery throughout the world. (Applause.) Christianity taught that they were to do unto others as they would that others should do unto them, and that they should remember those who were in bonds, as if they themselves were in bondage too. If they observed these divine precepts,-if they were disposed to yield obedience to the high behests of heaven, all wordly considerations must sink to nothing in their eyes before those sublime and all-comprehensive passages of Holy Writ. (Hear.) Religion taught them to consider all mankind, without exception, as their brethren and friends; and the time would come when even the oppressor of the negro would be compelled, with fear and shame, to own his victim as a brother, and to give an account of the wrongs and injuries that had been heaped upon him. (Hear, hear.) 'Not only has the negro been denied the enjoyment of civil rights-not only has he been doomed to hew wood and draw water' for the white man; but the benefits of religion have been denied his teachers have been persecuted and banished-the house in which he worshipped his God, and in which he was taught to lift his eyes in hope and confidence to one common Father-that house has been razed to its foundation; thus particularly, even in the present day, has his right to hope for immortality been denied, and he has been consigned to ignorance and vice, to the labor and treatment of a brute on earth, and the destiny of a brute hereafter. Yet his pale oppressor has proudly claimed immortality for himself, and has contemplated that immortality without dread of the judgment awaiting him for his ruthless conduct towards his sable victim. But (and I thank Heaven) a title to immortality is not the exclusive prerogative of the white man; they must both die the same death-both mingle with the same earth-both be resolved into the same element-both be judged at the same tribunal-by the same rule-both admitted to the same heaven, or banished to the same hell. Yes! let the oppressor die! let men bear his corse to the tomb decked with the trappings of an earthly splendor! let them write his epitaph on marble, and celebrate virtues which he never had, and let them say, high on his escutcheon, RESURGAM, RESURGAM, RESURGAM! I shall rise again; and I will visit the grave of the lowly negro, the enslaved, insulted, degraded, and lacerated negro, and I will write upon the sod that covers his remains, RESURGAM, Resurgam, ResurgaM! I shall rise again.' He was not there to vilify any party; he was not there, as had been most falsely represented, to make an attack upon property and vested rights; but he stood there on Christian principles, only to claim for the negro equality of rights; to elevate the negro from that state of degradation in which the avarice of mankind had placed him; to bestow upon him not merely civil liberty, but, under the blessing of God, that more hallowed, more glorious, and more eduring liberty, which senators or magistrates could not give, and all the powers of earth nor hell take away. 'A liberty unsung By poets, and by senators unpraised, Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers A liberty, which persecution, fraud, Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind; Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.' (Applause.) He took his stand upon the broad and immutable principles of justice and mercy, truth and love, and asked whether Englishmen, on these grounds, would not open the prison doors and bid the oppressed go free; would not 7* vindicate their love of liberty before the whole world, and thus free themselves from the guilt of fostering, within the very heart of their dominions, the foulest system that had ever defiled the earth or insulted Heaven. (Applause.) He demanded immediate and total emancipation for the negro; not an emancipation from the restraints of law and justice to which Englishmen themselves were subject; but emancipation from the whip; emancipation from that odious and impious system which gave man the right of property in the bodies and souls of his fellow-men, and the substitution of public and and recognised authority, for private and irresponsible power. He asked only for such an alteration of the law as would best promote the interests of all parties; as would secure to the negro the possession of all his rights; give safety to the planters, and provide for the proper cultivation of the soil. If he offended, that was the head and front of his offending.' (Applause.) He had not then time to trace the history and effects of slavery. Were he to do so he would have to carry them back 340 years, when Columbus first discovered those beautiful isles, now constituting the British West Indies, standing out like emerald spots in the waste of waters-the innocent and amiable inhabitants of which imagined Englishmen to be visitors from heaven, until they found how grievously they had been deceived; he should have to tell the horrid barbarities perpetrated by the Spaniards, and how, after having stained the earth with the blood of their victims, and almost depopulated the land, they were obliged to procure fresh victims to minister to their avarice and cupidity, and he should then come to the commencement of that odious and abominable traffic, in which this town had, unfortunately, so large a share, the African Slave Trade. It might be alleged that this was the crime of a former age; he admitted it; they might if they would, make him the representative of all the guilt incurred, but he begged, he implored them to allow him to make all reparation in his power to the sons and daughters of the oppressed, whilst it was in his power-whilst the colonies yet existed, whilst the victim still breathed. (Hear, hear.) Sir J. Hawkins who first introduced this trade, told Queen Elizabeth, with consummate deception, that the |