utter them. In this feeble state, the exhausted powers of life leave little within my competence for your service. If with the aid of my younger and abler coadjutors, I can still contribute anything to advance the institution within whose walls we are mingling manifestations to this our guest, it will be, as it ever has been, cheerfully and zealously bestowed. And could I live to see it once enjoy the patronage and cherishment of our public authorities with undivided voice, I should die without a doubt of the future fortunes of my native State, and in the consoling contemplation of the happy influence of this institution on its character, its virtue, its prosperity and safety.

* * * I add, for our nation at large, the aspirations of a heart warm with the love of country; whose invocations to Heaven for its indissoluble union, will be fervent and unremitting while the pulse of life continues to beat, and, when that ceases, it will expire in prayers for the eternal duration of its freedom and prosperity."*

At last Jefferson could feel that one of his great life works was completed. Indeed, a noble dream of a great statesman was in a good degree realized. He had by his labors in behalf of true learning set an example worthy of the admiration of every intelligent lover of civil liberty in every land! He had by his actions proved, in a manner eloquent even to being pathetic, the sincerity of his convictions of the importance to a republic of universities.

*"Life of Thomas Jefferson." By Henry S. Randall, LL.D., vol. iii., p. 504.

رز

IV.

66 OUR COLORED BRETHREN."

IT is well, sometimes, for students of the science of government to notice how great statesmen have viewed certain questions of great national importance, and to ask themselves how some of the greatest and wisest of these men would act were they to-day the custodians of all the best interests of the American continent.

A subject of inexpressibly vast importance to the people of the United States, to which Jefferson gave deep, heart-felt, and prayerful consideration, was one respecting the well-being of those whom he called "our colored brethren." He formed some far-reaching conclusions which are worthy of the most serious consideration of the statesmen of modern times.

Upon the system of negro slavery which prevailed in his day in the United States-especially in the Southern States he looked with abhorrence, and with feelings of the gravest apprehension as he considered the effect which it would some day have upon the welfare of his country. In the year 1775, having been taken ill while on his way to the Continental Congress, he forwarded to his fellow statesmen, for the inspection of such of them as cared to look at his written opinion respecting America's controversy with England, an essay, entitled "The Rights of Englishmen in America." Some members of Congress, less cautious than others, published the essay, and the

eloquent Edmund Burke, with some alterations, republished it in England. The English Government in impotent displeasure placed Jefferson's name on a proscribed list. In this pamphlet, or book, Jefferson indignantly declared that, "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs, to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by the infamous practice."

At the Congress of 1776, Jefferson draughted the Declaration of American Independence, which was slightly revised by his colleagues John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. As I write I have a fac-simile copy of the original document before me. The handwriting of the Declaration may be said to betray especially deep feeling when allusion is made to the last of a series of enumerated wrongs committed by Great Britain against the people of America. The only words that were underscored in the whole document were in this last paragraph. The words are so feelingly marked that it is perhaps impossible in print to give the force of the emphasis which the writer evidently intended them to have. Jefferson, of the King of Great Britain, thus wrote: "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur mis

commerce.

* * * "

erable death on their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable In the Continental Congress there were found two men who objected to this part of the Declaration of Independence. One of them was a delegate from Georgia, the other was a delegate from South Carolina. The Congress felt that it was of great importance that union should be preserved among the colonies, and rather than run the risk of separating any colonies from the Union it was decided that the whole paragraph should be stricken out. The first Continental Congress, on October 20th, 1774, had signed and promulgated " Articles of Association." These "Articles" formed a bond of union. among the colonies who were pledged by them to "neither import nor purchase any slave,” and to "wholly discontinue the slave-trade." In this bond of union it was declared that any one who violated the Articles should be pronounced "foes to the rights of British America," should be "universally contemned as the foes of American liberty," and should be regarded as unworthy of the rights of freemen." These pledges of the Continental Congress were adopted by colonial conventions, county meetings, and by other assemblies throughout the colonies. It may indeed have been in part for another reason than that of hatred to negro slavery that the people thus acted, but it is certain that there were American statesmen who hated slavery and were not afraid to avow, in burning language, their convictions. Hatred to slavery was not confined to descendants of the Puritans. The Assembly of Virginia, after discussing the evil of slavery, had voted

to tax every cargo of slaves, but the King of England had negatived the bill. To an address from the Legislature of Virginia to the King of Great Britain in 1772,-an address in which the inhumanity of holding human beings in bondage was dwelt upon, and in which the conviction was expressed that it was opposed to the security and happiness of the people and would even in time endanger their existence,-his Majesty replied that "upon pain of his highest displeasure the importation of slaves should not be in any respect obstructed." South Carolina had decided in its Legislature that the slave trade should be discouraged by taxing the slaves brought to the colony, but the Crown had in 1761, negatived the bill. Two years after the Declaration of Independence Jefferson successfully moved in the Assembly of Virginia that the slave trade should be prohibited in every port over which Virginia had control. In the book entitled "Notes on Virginia," which Jefferson wrote during the Revolutionary War-he estimated the number of free inhabitants of Virginia at 296,852 and the number of slaves at 270,762, or, as he expressed it "nearly as 11 to 10." He feelingly wrote that, "Under the mild treatment our slaves experience, and their wholesome, though coarse food, this blot in our country increases as fast, or faster than the whites. During the regal government we had at one time [in Virginia] obtained a law which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves as amounted nearly to a prohibition, when one inconsiderate Assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then reigning sovereign, and no devices, no expedients, which could ever be attempted by subsequent Assemblies, and they seldom met without attempting them, could succeed in getting the royal assent to the renewal of the duty. In the very

II