Transcribers' note: Original spelling has been maintained and notstandardized; footnotes were renumbered for consistency.
BY ST. GEORGE TUCKER,
PROFESSOR OF LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WILLIAM AND MARY, AND ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE GENERAL COURT, IN VIRGINIA.
Slavery not only violates the Laws of Nature, and of civil Society, it also wounds the best Forms of Government: in a Democracy, where all Men are equal, Slavery is contrary to the Spirit of the Constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
PHILADELPHIA:
PRINTED FOR MATHEW CAREY,
No. 118, Market-Street.
1796.
TO THE
General Assembly of Virginia,
To whom it belongs to decideupon the expediency and practicabilityof a plan forthe gradual abolition of Slaveryin this commonwealth,
The following pages are most respectfully submitted and inscribed,
BY THE AUTHOR.
Williamsburg, in Virginia,
May 20, 1796.
The following pages form a part of a course of Lectures on Law andPolice, delivered in the University of William and Mary, in thiscommonwealth. The Author considering the Abolition of Slavery in thisState, as an object of the first importance, not only to our moralcharacter and domestic peace, but even to our political salvation; andbeing persuaded that the accomplishment of so momentous and desirable anundertaking will in great measure depend upon the early adoption of someplan for that purpose, with diffidence submits to the consideration ofhis countrymen his ideas on a subject of such consequence. He flattershimself that the plan he ventures to suggest, is liable to fewerobjections than most others that have been submitted to theconsideration of the public, as it will be attended with a gradualchange of condition in the blacks, and cannot possibly affect theinterest either of creditors, or any other description of persons ofthe present generation: and posterity he makes no doubt will feelthemselves relieved from a perilous and grievous burden by the timelyadoption of a plan, whose operation may be felt by them, before they areborne down by a weight which threatens destruction to our happiness bothpublic and private.
☞ The following ADDITIONAL NOTES have been received from the Author since the body of this work was printed off.
In page 20, after the word arms, in line 5, read this note:
This was the case under the laws of the state; but the Act of 2. Cong. c. 33. for establishing an uniform militia throughout the United States, seems to have excluded all but free white men from bearing arms in the militia.
To the word slave, page 47, line 14, add the following note:
It may not be improper here to note, that the first congress of the United States, at their third session, Dec. 1793, passed an act to prohibit the carrying on the slave trade from the United States to any foreign place or country; the provisions of which seem well calculated to restrain the citizens of united America from embarking in so infamous a traffick.