Eternal infamy awaits the abandoned miscreants, whose selfish souls could ever prompt them to rob unhappy Africa of her sons, and freight them hither by thousands, to poison the fair Eden of Liberty with the rank weed of individual bondage! Nor is it more to the credit of our ancestors, that they did not command these savage spoilers to bear their hateful cargo to another shore, where the shrine of freedom knew no votaries, and every purchaser would at once be both a master and a slave.

In the dawn of time, when the rough feelings of barbarism had not experienced the softening touches of refinement, such an unprincipled prostration of the inherent rights of human nature would have needed the gloss of an apology; but to the everlasting reproach of Maryland, be it said, that when her citizens rivalled the nation from whence they emigrated, in the knowledge of moral principles, and an enthusiasm in the cause of general freedom, they stooped to become the purchasers of their fellow creatures, and to introduce an hereditary bondage into the bosom of their country, which should widen with every successive generation.

For my own part, I would willingly draw the veil of oblivion over this disgusting scene of iniquity, but that the present abject state of those who are descended from these kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it forward to the memory.

But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure to our ancestors, or those from whom they purchased? Are not we EQUALLY guilty? They strewed around the seeds of slavery-we cherish and sustain the growth. They introduced the system-we enlarge, invigorate, and confirm it. Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people of Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude of Roman citizens, when the hand of oppression was lifted up against themselves; who could behold their country desolated and their citizens slaughtered; who could brave, with unshaken firmness, every calamity of war before they would submit to the smallest infringement of their rights-that this very people could yet see thousands of their fellow creatures, within the limits of their territory, bending beneath an unnatural yoke; and, instead of being assiduous to destroy their shackles, anxious to immortalize their duration, so that a nation of slaves might forever exist in a country where freedom is its boast.

Sir, it is really matter of astonishment to me, that the people of Maryland do not blush at the very name of freedom. I admire that modesty does not keep them silent in her cause. That they who have, by the deliberate acts of their legislature, treated her most obvious dictates with contempt; who have exhibited for a long series of years, a spectacle of slavery which they still are solicitous to perpetuate; who, not content with exposing to the world for near a century, a speaking picture of abominable oppression, are still ingenious to prevent the hand of generosity from robbing it of half its horrors; that they should step forward as the zealous partisans of freedom, cannot but astonish a person who is not casuist enough to reconcile antipathies.

For shame, sir! let us throw off the mask; 'tis a cobweb one at best, and the world will see through it. It will not do thus to talk like philosophers, and act like unrelenting tyrants; to be perpetually sermonizing it, with liberty for our text, and actual oppression for our commentary.

But, sir, is it possible that this body should not feel for the reputation of Maryland? Is national honor unworthy of consideration? Is the censure of an enlightened universe insufficient to alarm us? It may proceed from the ardor of youth, perhaps, but the character of my country among the nations of the world is as dear to me as that country itself. What a motley appearance must Maryland at this moment make in the eyes of those who view her with deliberation! Is she not at once the fair temple of freedom, and the abominable nursery of slaves; the school for patriots, and the foster-mother of petty despots; the asserter of human rights, and the patron of wanton oppression? Here have emigrants from a land of tyranny found an asylum from persecution, and here also have those, who came as rightfully free as the winds of heaven, found an eternal grave for the liberties of themselves and their posterity!

In the name of God, should we not attempt to wipe away this stigma, as far as the impressions of the times will allow? If we dare not strain legislative authority so as to root up the evil at once, let us do all we dare, and lop the exuberance of its branches. I would sooner temporize than do nothing. At least we should show our wishes by it.

But, lest character should have no more than its usual weight with us, let us examine into the policy of thus perpetuating slavery among us, and also consider this regulation in particular with the objections applicable to each. That the result will be favorable to us, I have no doubt.

That the dangerous consequences of this system of bondage have not as yet been felt, does not prove they never will be. At least the experiment has not been sufficiently made to preclude speculation and conjecture. To me, sir, nothing for which I have not the evidence of my senses is more clear, than that it will one day destroy that reverence for liberty, which is the vital principle of a republic.

While a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with the authority of despots, within particular limits; while your youth are reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights of human nature are not so sacred but they may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected that the public mind should glow with that generous ardor in the cause of freedom, which can alone save a government like ours from the lurking demon of usurpation? Do you not dread the contamination of principle? Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit which once conducted us to victory and independence, when the talons of power were unclasped for our destruction? Have you no apprehension left, that when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at the gloomy altars of slavery, they will at length become apostates from the former? For my own part, I have no hope

that the stream of general liberty will flow for ever, unpolluted, through the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not in time be base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle.

There is no maxim in politics more evidently just, than that laws should be relative to the principle of government. But is the encouragement of civil slavery, by legislative acts, correspondent with the principle of a democracy?-Call that principle what you will, the love of equality, as defined by some-of liberty, as understood by others, such conduct is manifestly in violation of it.

To leave the principle of a government to its own operation, without attempting either to favor or undermine it, is often dangerous; but to make such direct attacks upon it by striking at the very root, is the perfection of crooked policy. Hear what has been said on this point, by the noblest instructer that ever informed a statesman.

"In despotic countries," says MONTESQUIEU, "where they are already in a state of political slavery, civil slavery is more tolerable than in other governments. Every one ought there to be contented with necessaries and with life. Hence the condition of a slave is hardly more burthensome than that of a subject. But in a monarchical government, where it is of the utmost consequence that human nature should not be debased or dispirited; there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon an equality, and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to endeavor to make them so, as far as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution; it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to possess.'

Such must have been the idea in England, when the general voice of the nation demanded the repeal of the statute of Edward VI, two years after its passage, by which their rogues and vagabonds were to be enslaved for their punishment. It could not have been compassion for the culprits that excited this aversion to the law, for they deserved none. But the spirit of the people could not brook the idea of bondage, even as a penalty judicially inflicted. They dreaded its consequences-they abhorred the example. In a word, they reverenced public liberty, and hence detested every species of slavery.

Sir, the thing is impolitic in another respect. Never will your country be productive; never will its agriculture, its commerce, or its manufactures flourish, so long as they depend on reluctant bondmen for their progress.

"Even the earth itself," (says the same celebrated author,) "which teems with profusion under the cultivating hand of the freeborn laborer, shrinks into barrenness from the contaminating sweat of a slave." This sentiment is not more figuratively beautiful than sub stantially just.

Survey the countries, sir, where the hand of freedom conducts the ploughshare, and compare their produce with yours. Your granaries in this view appear like the storehouses of emmets, though not sup

plied with equal industry. To trace the cause of this disparity, between the fruits of a freeman's voluntary labors, animated by the hope of profit, and the slow-paced efforts of a slave, who acts from compulsion only-who has no incitement to exertion but fear, no prospect of remuneration to encourage-would be insulting the understanding. The cause and the effect are too obvious to escape observation.

It has been said "that freed men are the convenient tools of usurpation:" and I have heard allusions made to history for the confirmation of this opinion. Let, however, the records of ancient and modern events be scrutinized, and I will venture my belief, that no instance can be found to give sanction to any such idea.

In Rome, it was clearly otherwise. We have the evidence of Tiberius Gracchus, confirmed by Cicero, and approved by Montesquieu, that the incorporation of the freed men into the city tribes, reanimated the drooping spirit of democracy in that republic, and checked the career of patrician influence.

So far, therefore, were properly made emancipations from contributing to the downfall of Rome, that they clearly served to procrastinate her existence, by restoring that equipoise in the constitution which an ambitious aristocracy were perpetually laboring to destroy.

How much more rational, Mr. Speaker, would it be to argue that slaves are the fit machines by which an usurper might effect his purposes! and there is, therefore, nothing which a free government ought more to dread than a diffusive private bondage within its territory.

A promise of manumission might rouse every bondman to arms, under the conduct of an aspiring leader; and invited by the fascinating prospect of freedom, they might raise such a storm in Maryland as it would be difficult to appease. Survey the conduct of the slaves who fought against Hannibal in the second punic war. Relying on the assurances of the senate, who had embodied them with the Roman legions, that conquest should give them liberty, not a man disgraced himself by flight; but though new, perhaps, to the field of battle, they contended with the resolution of veterans. With the same promptitude and intrepidity would they have turned their arms against the senate themselves, if the same assurances had been given them by enterprising citizens who sought their destruction from motives of ambition or revenge. The love of liberty is inherent in human nature. To stifle or annihilate it, though not impossible, is yet difficult to be accomplished. Easy to be wrought upon, as well as powerful and active in its exertions, wherever it is not gratified there is danger. Gratify it, and you ensure your safety. Thus did Sylla think, who, before he abdicated the dictatorship, gave freedom to ten thousand slaves, and lands to a number of legions. By these means was he enabled, notwithstanding all his preceding enormities, to live unmolested as a private citizen, in the bosom of that very country where he had acted the most hateful deeds of cruelty and usurpation. For, by manumitting these slaves, the usurper secured their fidelity

and attachment for ever, and disposed them to support and revenge his cause at every possible hazard. Rome knew this, and therefore Sylla was secure in his retirement.

This example shows that slaves are the proper, natural implements of usurpation, and therefore a serious and alarming evil in every free community. With much to hope for by a change, and nothing to lose, they have no fears of consequences. Despoiled of their rights by the acts of government and its citizens, they have no checks of pity, or of conscience, but are stimulated by the desire of revenge, to spread wide the horrors of desolation, and to subvert the foundation of that liberty of which they have never participated, and which they have only been permitted to envy in others.

But where slaves are manumitted by government, or in consequence of its provisions, the same motives which have attached them to tyrants, when the act of emancipation has flowed from them, would then attach them to government. They are then no longer the creatures of despotism. They are bound by gratitude, as well as by interest, to seek the welfare of that country from which they have derived the restoration of their plundered rights, and with whose prosperity their own is inseparably involved. All apostacy from these principles, which form the good citizen, would, under such circumstances, be next to impossible. When we see freed men scrupulously faithful to a lawless, abandoned villain, from whom they have received their liberty, can we suppose that they will reward the like bounty of a free government with the turbulence of faction, or the seditious plots of treason? He who best knows the value of a blessing, is generally the most assiduous in its preservation; and no man is so competent to judge of that value as he from whom the blessing has deen detained. Hence the man that has felt the yoke of bondage must for ever prove the asserter of freedom, if he is fairly admitted to the equal enjoyment of its benefits.-Speech in the Maryland House of Delegates, 1789.

WARNER MIFFLIN.

A serious expostulation with the members of the House of Representatives of the United States.-But whether you will hear or forbear, I think it my duty to tell you plainly, that I believe that the blood of the slain, and the oppression exercised in Africa, promoted by Americans, and in this country also, will stick to the skirts of every individual of your body, who exercise the powers of legislation, and do not exert their talents to clear themselves of this abomination, when they shall be arraigned before the tremendous bar of the judgment seat of Him who will not fail to do right, in rendering unto every man his due ; even Him who early declared, "at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man ;" before whom the natural black skin of the body will never occasion such degradation. I desire to ap