N. Y. LEGISLATURE-W. WIRT-J. RANDOLPH.

Rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the pilgrims should bear the shame longer. Let that spot be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and let civilized men henceforth have no communion with it.

I invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they exercise the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of those crimes, and add its solemn sanction to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.

NEW YORK LEGISLATURE.

On the 20th day of January, 1820, the following preamble and resolutions were taken up in the senate (having passed the house) of the New-York Legislature, and unanimously passed. [Mr. Van Buren, who was then in the senate of that state, voted in favor of them.]

Whereas, the inhibiting the further extension of slavery in the United States, is a subject of deep concern to the people of this state: and whereas, we consider slavery as an evil much to be deplored, and that every constitutional barrier should be interposed to prevent its further extension; and the constitution of the United States clearly gives congress the right to require new states, not comprised within the original boundary of the United States, to make the prohibition of slavery a condition of their admission into the Union: Therefore,

Resolved, (if the honorable senate concur therein) That our senators be instructed, and our members of congress be requested, to oppose the admission as a state into the Union, of any territory not comprised as aforesaid, without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission.

WILLIAM WIRT.

Slavery was contrary to the laws of nature and of nations and that the law of South Carolina, concerning seizing colored seamen, was unconstitutional. * * * Last and lowest, a feculum of beings called overseers-the most abject, degraded, unprincipled racealways cap in hand to the dons who employ them, and furnishing materials for their pride, insolence, and love of dominion.-Life of Patrick Henry.

JOHN RANDOLPH.

Dissipation, as well as power or prosperity hardens the heart, but avarice deadens it to every feeling, but the thirst for riches. Avarice alone could have produced the slave-trade. Avarice alone can drive, as it does drive, this infernal traffic, and the wretched victims, like so many posthorses, whipped to death in a mail coach. Ambition has its cover-sluts, in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; but where are the trophies of avarice? The handcuff, the manacle,

and the blood-stained cowhide!

What man is worse received in society for being a hard master? Who denies the hand of a sister or daughter to such monsters ?-nay, they have even appeared in "the abused shape of the vilest of women." I say nothing of India or Amboynaof Cortez, or Pizarro.-Southern Literary Messenger.

[In March, 1816, John Randolph submitted the following resolution to the House of Representatives:] "Resolved, That a committee be appointed, to inquire into the existence of an inhuman and illegal traffic of slaves, carried on in and through the District of Columbia, and to report whether any, and what measures are necessary for putting a stop to the same."

"Virginia is so impoverished by the system of slavery, that the tables will sooner or later be turned, and the slaves will advertise for runaway masters,"

"Sir, I neither envy the head nor the heart of that man from the North, who rises here to defend slavery upon principle."-Rebuke of Edward Everett, in Congress, 1820.

"3. I have upwards of two thousand pounds sterling in the hands of Baring, Brothers & Co., of London, and upwards of one thousand pounds of like money in the hands of Gowan and Marx; this money I leave to my executor, Wm. Leigh, as a fund for carrying into execution my will respecting my slaves."

"I give to my slaves their freedom, to which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled. It has a long time been a matter of the deepest regret to me, that the circumstances under which I inherited them, and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of the land, have prevented my emancipating them in my lifetime, which it is my full intention to do in case I can accomplish it."

The codicil goes on to make provision for his servants John and wife, and for Juba and his wife, and another woman :-"And I hereby request (says he) the General Assembly (the only request that I ever preferred to them,) to let the above named and such other of my old and faithful slaves as desire it, to remain in Virginia; recommending them each and all to the care of my said execute, who I know is too wise, just and humane to send them to Liberia, or any other place in Africa or the West Indies."-Cod. Jan. 1826.

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the state for internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore confidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the safety of our wives, and our children. Yet sir, I must ask, upon whom is to fall the burden of this defence? not upon the lordly masters of their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with their families when danger threatens. No, sir; it is to fall upon the less wealthy class of our citizens; chiefly upon the non-slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out where there was not a slaveholder among them, and this is the practice of the country. I have slept in times of alarm quietly in bed, withex having a thought of care, while these indi

viduals, owning none of this property themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a pittance of seventy-five cents per twelve hours, the very curtilage of my house, and guarding that property, which was alike dangerous to them and myself. After all, this is but an expedient. As this population becomes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your guard must be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for the expense of its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening the free population of a country.

The gentlemen has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being a part of the profit; it is admitted; but no great evil can be averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be questioned, how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice in parts of Virginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this ancient dominior, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted in one grand menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for the shambles. Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave-trade; that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the slave, a stranger in language, aspect and manner, from the merchant who has brought him from the interior. The ties of father, mother, husband and child, have all been rent in twain before he receives him, his soul has become callous. But here, sir, individuals, whom the master has known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the innocent gambols of childhood, who have been accustomed to look to him for protection, he tears from the mother's arms, and sells into a strange country, among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.

;

He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the same principle, he could justify Mahometism, with its plurality of wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery and murder, or any other of the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist in any part of civilized Europe? No sir, in no part of it.-Speech in the Virginia Legislature.

GOVERNOR RANDOLPH.

The deplorable error of our ancestors in copying a civil institution from savage Africa, has affixed upon their posterity a depressing burden, which nothing but the extraordinary benefits conferred by our happy climate, could have enabled us to support. We have been far outstripped by states, to whom nature has been far less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, under other circumstances, the amount of general wealth in Virginia, or the whole sum of comfortable subsistence and happiness possessed by all her inhabitants.— Address to the Legislature of Virginia, in 1820.

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WILLIAM YATES.

By the freehold qualification now affixed to the right of voting by colored citizens of the state of New-York, a large number of the people of the state, who, from 1777, when the old constitution was formed, for forty-five years had enjoyed the right of voting, on the same terms as white citizens, were disfranchised. The odious principle of making discriminations among men, on the ground of color, was established; and, by engrafting it into the fundamental law of the state, a monument of injustice has been reared, which will take years to demolish.

The convention of 1821, contained as large a number of men of the first order of mind and attainments, as any similar body ever assembled in the United States. And it is a trait worthy of notice, in the members of that assembly, that the most respectable, the purest and best, were found on the side of the colored people. It would be invidious, perhaps, to discriminate among the living, though we could point to such men as a Chancellor Kent, a Jay, and Van Rensselaer. But in regard to the dead, many of the worthiest and ablest in that body are now of that number. And of these are Jonas Platt, and Wm. W. Van Ness, both, when living, Justices of the Supreme Court, Rufus King, long a senator of the United States, and Abraham Van Vechten, in life the well known patriarch of the New-York Bar, all of whom, and others who might be named, advocated the rights of the people of color. The first vote was 63 to 59 for preserving their rights.-Rights of Colored Men.

NATHAN SANFORD.

Here there is, but one estate-the people. And, to me, the only qualification seems to be, their virtue and morality. If they may be safely trusted to vote for one class of rulers, why not for all? The principle of the scheme now presented, is, that those who bear the burdens of the state shall choose those that rule it; and we wish to carry it almost as far as our male population. It is the scheme which has been proposed by a majority of the committee, and they think it safe and beneficial.

PETER A. JAY.

It was not expected that this right of suffrage was in any instance to be restricted, much less was it anticipated, or desired, that a single person was to be disfranchised. Why, sir, are these men to be excluded from rights which they possess in common with their countrymen? What crime have they committed for which they are to be punished? Why are they, who were born as free as ourselves, natives of the same country, and deriving from nature and our po. litical institutions the same rights and privileges which we have, now to be deprived of all those rights, and doomed to remain for ever as aliens among us? We are told, in reply, that other states have set us the example. It is true that other states treat this race of men with cruelty and injustice, and that we have hitherto manifested towards them a disposition to be just and liberal. Yet even in Vir

ginia and North Carolina, free people of cofor are permitted to vote, and if I am correctly informed, exercise that privilege. In Pennsylvania, they are much more numerous than they are here, and there they are not disfranchised, [altered in 1838,] nor has any inconvenience been felt from extending to all men the rights which ought to be common to all.

ROBERT CLARKE.

Free people of color are included in the number which regulates your representation in congress, and I wish to know how freemen can be represented when they are deprived of the privilege of voting for representatives. The constitution says, "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the different states, according to the inhabitants thereof, including all free persons," &c. All colors and complexions are here included. It is not free "white" persons. No sir, our venerable fathers entertained too strong a sense of justice. to countenance such an odious distinction. Now, sir, taking this in connexion with the declaration of independence, I think you cannot exclude them without being guilty of a palpable violation of every principle of justice. We are usurping to ourselves a power which we do not possess; and by so doing, deprive them of a privilege to which they are, and always have been, justly entitled-an invaluable right a right in which we have prided ourselves as constituting our su periority over every other people on earth-a right which they have enjoyed ever since the formation of our government-the right of suf. frage. And why do we do this? Instead of visiting the iniquities of these people upon them and their children, we are visiting their misfortunes upon them and their posterity unto the latest generation.

In this very house, in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation of all the branches of your government, authorizing the governor to accept the services of a corps of 2000 free people of color. Sir, these were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was no sporting matter to bear arms. These were times when a man who shouldered his musket, did not know but he bared his bosom to re ceive a death wound from the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times, these people were found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other. They were not compelled to go, they were not drafted. No, your pride had placed them beyond your com pulsory power. But there was no necessity for its exercise; they were volunteers; yes sir, volunteers to defend from the inroads and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe, that very country which had treated them with insult, degradation, and slavery. Volunteers are the best of soldiers; give me the men, whatever be their complexion, that willingly volunteer, and not those who are compelled to turn cut; such men do not fight from necessity, nor from mercenary mo tives, but from principle. Such men formed the most efficient corps for your country's defence in the late war; and of such consisted the crews of your squadrons on Erie and Champlain, who largely con tributed to the safety and peace of your country, and the renown of her arms. Yet, strange to tell, such are the men whom you seek to degrade and oppress.