eportment and the spirit of
forbearance manifested by the colored people, from the outset, has
been of the most marked as well as praiseworthy character, and in
instances not a few, has secured to them the approbation of avowed
enemies of the anti-slavery cause.' We add our own testimony, so far
as our observation has extended, to the truth of this statement.

In the fifth evening's debate, Mr. B. complains, page 120, that Mr.
Thompson 'did not tell them that none of the ministers in twelve whole
states were or could easily be slaveholders, seeing they were not
inhabitants of a slave state.' And why should he. Would not the mere
knowledge of the fact, that 'they were not inhabitants of slave
states' render it unnecessary that his hearers should be particularly
informed that they were not slaveholders? Does Mr. B. believe that the
people of Glasgow supposed Northern ministers to be generally
slaveholders? We say _generally_, for we should not dare to assert
that '_none_' of them 'were,' whether they '_easily_ could be' or not.
If we have not been misinformed, and we believe we have not, it has
been our fortune, good or ill, to hear a northern slaveholding
minister preach, a minister too, whose pastoral charge was in the very
cradle of this _free_ nation.

'The overwhelming mass of American ministers,' says Mr. B., 'never
owned a slave, and those who had, were exceptions from the general
rule.' Mr. T. has demolished this position with a most tremendous
broadside of evidence. We add the following quotation, which we find
in the Emancipator, from a document published a few months ago, by the
Synod of South Carolina and Georgia. 'The number of our ministers is
but little more than half the number of our churches, and of those
ministers _not one fifth sustain any pastoral relation_.' The number
of ministers is about 100, 'and many of them are obliged to devote a
part or the whole of their time to teaching, _farming_, or some other
secular employment, to procure a support for their families.' Farming
we all know, means in the slave states, 'slaveholding and
slave-driving.'

Mr. B. seems very indignant at the declarations of his opponent, and
Moses Roper, (a colored man who had been present at some of the
meetings which Mr. T. addressed,) that slaves in America were owned,
not only by ministers and church members, but even by churches
themselves. He calls Roper's statement, 'the poor negro's silly
falsehood,' and says, page