abolition, and regulations might be made in relation to the introduction of them into the new States to be formed out of the Western Territory. He thought the object well worthy of consideration.

MR. GERRY thought the interference of Congress fully compatible with the Constitution, and could not help lamenting the miseries to which the natives of Africa were exposed by this inhuman commerce. He never contemplated the subject without reflecting what his own feelings would be, in case himself, his children, or friends were placed in the same deplorable circumstances. He then adverted to the flagrant acts of cruelty which are committed in carrying on that traffic; and asked whether it can be supposed that Congress has no power to prevent such abuses? Congress can, agreeably to the Constitution, lay a duty of ten dollars on imported slaves; they may do this immediately. He made a calculation of the value of the slaves in the Southern States, and supposed they may be worth ten millions of dollars. Congress have a right, if they see proper, to make a proposal to the Southern States to purchase the whole of them, and their resources in the Western Territory might furnish them with the means. He did not intend to suggest a measure of this kind; he only instanced these particulars to show that Congress certainly has a right to intermeddle in the business.

The memorials were referred to committee by a vote of 43 to 14.

On March 16 the committee made its report, which was that the Constitution expressly restrained the general Government from prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1808, and, by fair construction, prohibited Congress from interfering before that date with the emancipation of slaves, or the regulation of slaves by the States; the committee trusted, however, that the various legislatures would revise their laws from time to time to ameliorate the condition of the slaves.

The committee went on to declare that Congress had authority to lay a tax not exceeding ten dollars on each slave imported, and to make provision for the humane treatment of the slaves in passage, as well as to prohibit foreigners from fitting out slave ships in a port of the United States. Lastly, they advised that Congress inform the memorialists that, wherever it had jurisdic

tion in matters concerning slavery, it would be exercised on the principles of "justice, humanity, and good policy."

This report was debated from March 17 to 23, when it was passed, with amendments eliminating the suggestion to the State legislatures that Congress had the power to emancipate slaves after 1808 and the final notice to the memorialists. The vote upon entering on the Journal the original report of the committee, and the amended report, was passed by 29 to 25 votes.

The chief speakers in the debate were, in favor of the original report: Thomas Hartley [Pa.] and Elias Boudinot [N. J.]; against it, Alexander White [Va.], Edamus Burke and William L. Smith, of South Carolina.

PETITIONS AGAINST SLAVERY-Concluded

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 17-23, 1790

MR. WHITE moved the amendments to the report. Congress had no right to interfere with the States in their regulations of slaves. He did not, however, anticipate the difficulties from a total prohibition which some gentlemen seem to apprehendand, if Congress had it in their power to interdict this business at the present moment, he did not think the essential interests of the Southern States would suffer. Twenty years ago he supposed the idea he now suggested would have caused universal alarm. Virginia, however, about twelve years since prohibited the importation of negroes from Africa, and the consequences apprehended never were realized; on the contrary, the agriculture of that State was never in a more flourishing situation.

MR. HARTLEY reprobated the illiberal treatment which the memorialists had received, and asserted that they were friends to the Constitution, and that on the present occasion they came forward from the most laudable motives, from a wish to promote the happiness of mankind, that their conduct, so far from meriting censure, deserved and would receive the applause of the civilized world.

MR. BURKE animadverted with great freedom on the past and present conduct of the Quakers. He denied that they were the friends of freedom; he said that during the late war they were for bringing this country under a foreign yoke; they descended to the character of spies; they supplied the

enemy with provisions; they were guides and conductors to their armies; and whenever the American army came into their neighborhood they found themselves in an enemy's country.

Mr. Burke was proceeding in this strain when he was interrupted by being called to order. A warm altercation ensued.

MR. SMITH.-The memorial from the Quakers contained, in his opinion, a very indecent attack on the character of those States which possess slaves. It reprobates slavery as bringing down reproach on the Southern States, and expatiates on the detestation due to the licentious wickedness of the African trade, and the inhuman tyranny and blood guiltiness inseparable from it. He could not but consider it as calculated to fix a stigma of the blackest nature on the State he had the honor to represent, and to hold its citizens up to public view as men divested of every principle of honor and humanity. Considering it in that light, he felt it incumbent on him not only to refute those atrocious calumnies but to resent the improper language made use of by the memorialists. This application came with the worst grace possible from the Quakers, who professed never to intermeddle in politics but to submit quietly to the laws of the country.

If these were really their sentiments, why did not they abide by them? Why did not they leave that which they call God's work to be managed by himself? Those principles should instruct them to wait with patience and humility for the event of all public measures, and to receive that event as the Divine Will. It was difficult to credit their pretended scruples; because, while they were exclaiming against the Mammon of this world, they were hunting after it with a step steady as time and an appetite keen as the grave.

The memorial from the Pennsylvania Society applied, in express terms, for an emancipation of slaves, and the report of the committee appeared to hold out the idea that Congress might exercise the power of emancipating after the year 1808; for it said that Congress could not emancipate slaves prior to that period. He remarked that either the power of manumission still remained with the several States or it was exclusively vested in Congress; for no one would contend that such a power would be concurrent in the several States and the United States. He then showed that the State governments clearly retained all the rights of sovereignty which they had before

the establishment of the Constitution, unless they were exclusively delegated to the United States; and this could only exist where the Constitution granted, in express terms, an exclusive authority to the Union, or where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority, or where it granted an authority to the Union to which a similar authority in the States would be repugnant.

He applied these principles to the case in question; and asked whether the Constitution had, in express terms, vested the Congress with the power of manumission? Or whether it restrained the States from exercising that power? Or whether there was any auth ity given to the Union with which the exercise of this right by any State would be inconsistent? If these questions were answered in the negative, it followed that Congress had not an exclusive right to the power of manumission. Had it a concurrent right with the States? No gentleman would assert it, because the absurdity was obvious. For a State regulation on the subject might differ from a Federal regulation; in which case one or the other must give way. As the laws of the United States were paramount to those of the individual States, the Federal regulations would abrogate those of the States, consequently the States would thus be divested of a power which it was evident they now had and might exercise whenever they thought proper. But admitting that Congress had authority to manumit the slaves in America, and were disposed to exercise it, would the Southern States acquiesce in such a measure without a struggle? Would the citizens of that country tamely suffer their property to be torn from them? Would even the citizens of the other States which did not possess this property desire to have all the slaves let loose upon them? Would not such a step be injurious even to the slaves themselves? It was well known that they were an indolent people, improvident, averse to labor: when emancipated they would either starve or plunder. Nothing was a stronger proof of the absurdity of emancipation than the fanciful schemes which the friends to the measure had suggested. One was to ship them out of the country and colonize them in some foreign region. This plan admitted that it would be dangerous to retain them within the United States after they were manumitted: but surely it would be inconsistent with humanity to banish these people to a remote country, and to expel them from their native soil, and from places to which they had a local attachment. It would be no less repugnant to the principles of free

dom not to allow them to remain here if they desired it. How could they be called freemen if they were, against their consent, to be expelled the country? Thus did the advocates for emancipation acknowledge that the blacks, when liberated, ought not to remain here to stain the blood of the whites by a mixture of the races.

Another plan was to liberate all those who should be born after a certain limited period. Such a scheme would produce this very extraordinary phenomenon, that the mother would be a slave and her child would be free. These young emancipated negroes, by associating with their enslaved parents, would participate in all the debasement which slavery is said to occasion. But, allowing that a practicable scheme of general emancipation could be devised, there can be no doubt that the two races would still remain distinct. It is known from experience that the whites had such an idea of their superiority over the blacks that they never even associated with them; even the warmest friends to the blacks kept them at a distance and rejected all intercourse with them. Could any instance be quoted of their intermarrying? The Quakers asserted that nature had made all men equal and that the difference of color should not place negroes on a worse footing in society than the whites; but had any of them ever married a negro, and would any of them suffer their children to mix their blood with that of a black? They would view with abhorrence such an alliance.

Mr. Smith then read some extracts from Mr. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," proving that negroes were by nature an inferior race of beings, and that the whites would always feel a repugnance at mixing their blood with that of the blacks.

Thus that respectable author who was desirous of countenancing emancipation was, on a consideration of the subject, induced candidly to avow that the difficulties appeared insurmountable. The friends to manumission had said that by prohibiting the further importation of slaves and by liberating those born after a certain period a gradual emancipation might take place, and that in process of time the very color would be extinct and there would be none but whites. He was at a loss to learn how that consequence would result. If the blacks did not intermarry with the whites they would remain black to the end of time; for it was not contended that liberating them would whitewash them; if they would intermarry with the whites, then the