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original motives to their emigration and was the char-
acter of all their development, set narrow limits to slavery; in the states nearest the tropics it throve luxuriously, and its influence entered into their inmost political life.
Virginia with soil and temperature and mineral wealth inviting free and skilled labor, yet with lowland where the negro attained his perfect physical development, stood as mediator between the two.
Many of her statesmen—
George Mason,
Patrick Henry,
Jefferson,
Wythe,
Pendleton,
Richard Henry Lee—emulated each other in their confession of the iniquity and inexpediency of holding men in bondage.
We have seen the legislature of colonial
Virginia in 1772, in their fruitless battle
with the king respecting the slave-trade, of which he was the great champion, demand its abolition as needful for their happiness and their very existence.
In January, 1773,
Patrick Henry threw ridicule and con-
tempt on the clergy of
Virginia for their opposition to emancipation.
In that same year,
George Mason, demanding improvements in the constitution of the Old Dominion, addressed to its legislature these memorable words:
Mean and sordid, but extremely short-sighted and foolish, is thatself-interest which, in political questions, opposeth itself to the public good: a wise man can no other way so effectually consult the permanent welfare of his own family and posterity as by securing the just rights and privileges of that society to which they belong.
Perhaps the constitution may by degrees work itself clear by its own innate strength, the virtue and resolution of the community, as hath often been the
