from destruction those virtues which droop if they be not carefully cherished-were among the original objects of the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania. This institution was composed of men of the first distinction and merit; men who, fired by that liberty which the revolution established, were willing to render that liberty universal. They laboured for the general cause of the African, both bond and free. Though legal emancipation was the primary object of their convention, their comprehensive and benevolent plan embraced in connexion with it, the abolition of the slave trade, and the assistance and elevation of the African race. Schools were formed under competent teachers, and these were watched with the most anxious and unremitted assiduity. The operations of the Society, as a corporate body, were commenced in the year 1789, but it has, in fact, been in energetic agency, since about the year 1785. Nearly half a century has witnessed the devoted zeal of this philanthropic institution. Is it premature or invidious to inquire by what fruits its efforts have been distinguished? After the lapse of so many years, after the application of intense and persevering labour, if success has neither been realized nor loomed at a distance, is it unfair or unreasonable to doubt the final result of the experiment?

The abolition of our system of slavery in Pennsylvania was in 1780, a period of nearly five years before the organization of the Abolition Society. Is it a derogation from its claim to unquestioned benevolence to deny to it, as a body, any instrumentality in the enactment of the abolition law? The association was not in being at the period of its passage. The merit of the measure is to be ascribed to the profound sense entertained by the legislature, of the injustice and evils of slavery, incited as they were by Benezet* and other distinguished philanthropists.

The statute abolished hereditary servitude, and provided

* In the Life of Benezet, page 92, I find the following account of his instrumentality in the passage of the act. "During the sitting of the legislature in 1780, a session memorable for the enaction of a law which commenced the

for the freedom of the future generation of existing slaves, but those who were then in existence received no benefit from its provisions.* In 1790, which was ten years after the passage of the act, and five after the formation of the Society, there were nearly four thousand slaves in the state. The number has been gradually diminishing, but at the census of 1830, there were in Pennsylvania, sixty-seven slaves, the most of whom will irremediably continue till death, the absolute property of their masters.t This remnant of legal bondage has remained unimpaired and unaffected by the exertions of the Abolition Society, whose laudable zeal in the maintenance of human rights, must be greatly scandalised by its continuance. In Connecticut and Rhode Island slavery was abolished four years after its inheritable quality was expunged from the code of Pennsylvania, but slaves were permitted to exist, and are now actually in being, by the operation of their statutes. In New Jersey, according to the census of 1830, there existed the large number of two thousand two hundred and forty-six slaves.

Nor must a fact be omitted in this connexion, that the rapid diminution of slaves at the north, is not solely to be ascribed to the virtue of unaided statutes, but partly to sales

gradual abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania, he had private interviews on the subject, with every member of the government, and no doubt thus essentially contributed to the adoption of that celebrated measure."-Life of Anthony Benezet by Roberts Vaux.

* In the case of Miller v. Dwilling, decided in the year 1826, and reported in the 14th volume of Sergeant and Rawle's Reports, page 442, Judge Tilghman was called upon to give a construction to the act of 1780. He decides several interesting points, the first of which is, "That the legislature, anxious as it was to abolish slavery, thought it unjust to violate the right which every owner of a slave had to his service; and, therefore, every person who, at the time of passing the act, was a slave, was to remain a slave."

The number of slaves in Pennsylvania, as returned in the census of 1830, is three hundred and eighty-six. I have adopted in the text the number reported by a select Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania, who were appointed to investigate the cause of the increase since the year 1820, when the number returned was but two hundred and eleven. The Committee exclude from the computation all who were not in being when the abolition act was passed. Vide Journal of the Senate for 1832–3, page 483.

made to persons in the slave-holding districts, in anticipation or fraud of the law. Thus many unfortunate men, whose posterity by law would be free, or whose personal servitude would expire at a given period, by being sent beyond the pale of our jurisdiction, became bound by new and infrangible fetters. In the adjoining states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, legal servitude survives. If a sentiment has been imbibed in either, or all of these, unfavourable to its continuance, it is only justice and candour to admit that it has arisen from the efforts of their own philanthropists, and the influence of those internal causes which foreign argument or remonstrance could neither prevent nor accelerate. The whole South may be appealed to for the truth of the assertion, that certain measures ascribed there to the Abolition Societies, in exciting estrangement and hostility towards the North, have had the effect of silencing inquiry into the justice or policy of the system. Ill-judging individuals have greatly contributed to this alienation and repugnance. Assuming, as a principle, that man could not be legitimately the subject of property, it was thought to be a meritorious act to screen from re-capture, the fugitive who should seek an asylum within our borders. Numerous fugitives from the southern states have thus been enabled, either by connivance or active assistance, to elude the pursuit of their masters. In vain was it alleged, that the re-delivery of the slave to his legal owner, was a right recognised in the federal Constitution, and protected by express legislative enactment.* In vain was it predicted that such resistance

*The 2d Section of the 4th Art. of the Constitution of the United States provides, that "no person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such labour or service is due." A similar provision in regard to fugitives from justice, immediately precedes this rule in regard to slaves. The learned Du Ponceau, in his "Brief View of the Constitution of the United States," thus expresses his sense of this two-fold provision, page 45: "Fugitives from justice, and from personal service or labour, are to be delivered up, on being demanded in the manner prescribed by the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof." Accordingly, an

to rights, acknowledged by the laws of a sister state, would kindle into a flame those jealousies and suspicions which the accidents of commerce too frequently engender between independent and contiguous states. In vain were his abettors reminded of the effects which such interference must inevitably produce, in tightening the bonds of the slave by all such additional cords as the security of his person at home would render necessary. In vain were they admonished that the retention of a fugitive would prove injurious to the interests of Philadelphia, by the invitation it offered to others to make this city their refuge. In vain were they solemnly adjured, that by exciting indignant feelings at the south, they marred the prospect of legislative emancipation-that by concealing or harbouring a few runaways, sometimes the worst of the class, they forged new manacles for those who remained in bondage. Persuasion and remonstrance too often proved wholly ineffectual; for what could these effect against a line of conduct prompted by compassion for the slave, and the belief that it was a sacred duty to protect him?*

act of Congress was passed on the 12th of February, 1793, entitled, “An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters." The object of this enactment was to point out the mode by which fugitive slaves shall be restored to their masters in the states from which they may have escaped. The Abolition Act of Pennsylvania, which became a law upwards of seven years before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, is very explicit upon the subject of fugitive slaves from other States, although it aimed at the ultimate destruction of our domestic slavery. The 11th section provides, "that the said act, or any thing contained in it, should not give any relief or shelter to any absconding or runaway negro or mulatto slave or servant, who had absented himself, or should absent himself from his or her owner, master, or mistress, residing in any other state or country, but such owner, master, or mistress should have like right and aid to demand, claim, and take away his slave or servant, as he might have had in case the said act had not been made." It can hardly create surprise, that the slaveholder, smarting under pecuniary loss, should feel little respect for the man whose philanthropy could lead him to violate rights which were thus recognised by the Constitution of the United States, by act of Congress, and by the local legislation of his own state.

* Among the old abolitionists who paid respect to the legal institutions of the country, I may name the late Elisha Tyson, of Baltimore, whose efforts in the cause of abolition were so successful, that he is said to have been instrumental in liberating, during his life, two thousand slaves from bondage! His

I do not impute to the Society, as a body, the maintenance of such principles nor their reduction into practice. Its venerable and distinguished President* never would sanction or connive at a course of action so hostile to sound policy, and the dominion of municipal and constitutional law. But whoever may have been instrumental in producing it, the consequence is a decided repugnance at the South to all the acts of Abolition Societies. Their counsels are derided or bitterly laughed at, and their speeches and tracts, being branded as 'incendiary,' are neither listened to nor regarded. Nothing emanating from such a quarter, receives the decency of respect or attention. When the tranquillity of sober reflection is disturbed by objects of excitement, it is easy to adopt extravagant sentiments and to suggest new and plausible reasons in their defence. It was in this state of the public sensibilities at the South, that the doctrine of state rights was appealed to for the purpose of opposing the encroachments of Northern philanthropists. The cry was heard, that their laws were insulted and their property invaded by men who had nothing to lose by the toleration or extinction of slavery; that a society of another state which had abolished its domestic system, were assailing their own local institutions. The pride of the South coming to the aid of its passions and interest soon extinguished all hope of affecting their

*

*

intelligent biographer says: "During the whole course of Mr. Tyson's philanthropic exertions, he was strongly characterized for the profound deference which he paid to the laws of the land. * Not only because this is one of the conditions upon which every citizen has a right to continue in the community, but also because the encouraging of disobedience to the laws in one respect, would be the promoting of it in another; disobedience would grow into rebellion, and rebellion end in the total subversion of the state. It was for these reasons that his appeals in behalf of the persecuted Africans were made either to the clemency of individuals, or to the justice of the civil judge. * But those cases wherein argument and persuasion were unavailable, he submitted to the legal tribunals of the country; and having placed them there, left them to the future care of those whose oaths bound them to do justice.”—Life of Elisha Tyson, p. 13, 14.

* William Rawle LL. D., the author of the well known and able work on the Constitution of the United States.