opposition, it attacked the life of the beneficent government which had fostered its growth through forbearance, and perished from the sword of its own drawing.

The odious distinction of establishing negro slavery in the thirteen colonies belongs to England. Although the Dutch were the first to engage in transporting Africans to the colonies, yet, under their commerce alone, it languished, and slavery thus introduced could easily have been removed by the benevolent spirit of colonial legislation. It was not until after the treaty of Utrecht, under English monopoly, that the slave trade with the colonies acquired its importance. By the decisions of her chief counsellors, York and Talbot, England legalized it; by her sovereignty the American ports were thrown open to the slave trade, and the prohibitions of the colonies against such importation annulled; by her Queens and Lords, the business was carried on and profits shared; by her ministers, a cloak of religion was thrown around its foulness, and they called it a mode to evangelize the heathen; by her merchants it was declared that "negro labor will keep our colonies in due subserviency to their mother country; for while our plantations depend only on planting by the negro, our colonies can never prove injurious to British manufactories, never become independent of their kingdom." In 1702 Queen Anne instructed the governor of New York and New Jersey to "give due encouragement to slave merchants, and in particular to the royal African Company of England." In 1775 the Earl of Dartmouth declares "we can not allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation." Prior to 1740 England had introduced into the colonies about one hundred and thirty thousand blacks; by 1776 it had increased to three hundred thousand. thousand. The population of negro slaves among the thirteen colonies in 1754 stood as follows: New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine, 3,000; Rhode Island, 4,500; Connecticut 3,500; New York 11,000; New Jersey

5,500; Pennsylvania and Delaware 11,000; Maryland 4,400; Virginia 116,000; North Carolina 20,000; South Carolina 40,000; Georgia 2,000. Between 1754 and 1776 these numbers must have been greatly augmented, as that was the most flourishing time for slave merchants. We have no means of ascertaining what number there was at the time. the colonies declared their independence; but by the census taken in 1790 the population of slaves was returned as follows; New Hampshire 158; Rhode Island 952; Connecticut 2,759; Massachusetts emancipated hers in 1780; New York 21,324; New Jersey 11,423; Pennsylvania 3,737; Delaware 8,887; Maryland 103,036; Virginia 293,427; North Carolina 100,572; South Carolina 107,094; Georgia 29,264. It must be borne in mind that many had been emancipated by the northern States during and after the Revolution, and others had been taken into new States and Territories.

Thus did England plant "the great evil of Slavery" in the constitution of her colonies; and that in many cases against their earnest and filial remonstrance. Massachusetts always opposed the introduction of slaves from abroad, and in 1701 instructed her representatives "to put a period to negroes being slaves." But the Earl of Dartmouth interposes his edict, "we cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage, in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation." In 1645 two reputable townsmen of Boston, "sailed for Guinea to trade for negroes." But when it is noised abroad, public sentiment pronounces them malefactors and murderers, and a worthy magistrate denounces their act as contrary to the law of God and the law of the country, "and committed the guilty men for the offense." After advice with the elders and representatives of the people "bearing witness against the heinous crime of man-stealing," ordered the negroes to be restored at the public charge "to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the court" at their wrongs. But Queen Anne admonishes the governor "to give due encouragement to

slave merchants." In Virginia slavery built up a landed aristocracy who loved "the institution." But such was the spirit of popular liberty that it demands of the legislature to suppress the importation of slaves. The legislature yielding to some extent to the voice of its constituency levies a tax on each negro imported, but the Governor soon announces that "the interfering interests of the African company has obtained a repeal of that law." Whereupon a statesman of Virginia, despairing of success, declares that "the British government of Virginia constantly checks the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to the infernal traffic." In Georgia from the very first the colonists prohibited the introduction of slaves by law. James Oglethorpe whites, "my friends and I settled the colony of Georgia, and by charter were established trustees. We determined not to suffer slavery there; but the slave merchants and their adherents not only occasioned us much trouble, but at last got the government to sanction them." In New York the Dutch offered to furnish slaves to the colonists, but the rigor of the climate more than the humanity of the people, prevented the rapid growth of slavery there. But notwithstanding the obstacles which the climate interposed, the governor is instructed by royal authority to encourage the importation of negroes. In 1712 Pennsylvania circulates a general petition for the gradual emancipation of slaves by law. In the New England States laws were framed prohibiting the holding of negroes as slaves. Every man owning slaves was required after ten years to emancipate them; and every one failing to comply with this regulation was fined twice the value of each slave thus held. Although this law was not strictly enforced, still it shows the feeling. of the colony relative to slavery. Even South Carolina, where slavery is coeval with the settlement on Ashley River, and where it was found to be "very profitable," complains in 1727 of "the vast importation of slaves," and

when she seeks to apply a restriction, she is met by a rebuke from the English ministry.

The immortal Declaration of Independence contains a clear and familiar expression of the sentiments of the colonists upon the natural rights of men at that time. That "all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights" was no new conception of Jefferson; it was the embodiment of the deeply rooted convictions of the American people; an idea that had been fully discussed in their conventions. Even Georgia had, just the year previous, resolved in the Darien committee, "at all times to use our utmost efforts for the manumission of our slaves in this colony upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves." The clause in the original draft of the Declaration indicting George III, as the patron and upholder of the African slave trade, which was stricken out to satisfy South Carolina and Georgia, whose people had found slavery "profitable," expresses clearly the feelings of the majority of the colonists in regard to this horrible traffic in human flesh. It reads as follows:

"Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for every legislative attempt to prohibit, or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

The first Continental Congress in which the colonists enjoyed, for the first time, an unrestrained legislation, in accordance with the long expressed wish of the country, resolved "that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen united colonies."

After the Revolution. was over, the colonies having achieved their independence, the vast lands lying between the Alleghanies and Mississippi were held by certain members of the Confederacy. As the charters by which these lands were held conflicted; the whole having been won by the common valor of all the colonies; it was agreed, to avoid disputes and settle the matter upon equitable principles, that the colonies, thus holding lands, should cede their right over to the General Government. Accordingly in 1784 Mr. Jefferson reported "An Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States to the United States; specifying that such territory extends from the 31st to the 47th degree of latitude, so as to include what now constitutes the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi;" the fifth article of which ordinance declares "that after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor'involuntary servitude in any of the said States"-that is States formed from the said territory. The southern members generally voted against this bill, but it came so near being the fundamental law of the land, thus restricting slavery forever where the mother country had planted it, that it only lacked one vote, occasioned by the absence of a member from New Jersey.

In 1787 the last Continental Congress passed a law prohibiting slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio River which Virginia had ceded to the United States, and to which other States had relinquished their claims. The prohibition reads as follows:

"There shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall be duly convicted."

In the constitutional convention that framed the government under which which we now live, the triumph of