Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

The illustrious writer thus follows with his remarks.

"The colony supposed, that by this solemn convention, entered into with arms in their hands, they had secured the ancient limits of their country, its free trade, its exemption from taxation, but by their own assembly, and exclusion of military force from among them. Yet in Yet in every of these points was this convention violated by subsequent kings and parliaments, and other infractions of their constitution, equally dangerous committed....Their general assembly, which was composed of the council of state and burgesses, sitting together and deciding by plurality of voices, was split into two houses, by which the council obtained a separate negative on their laws. Appeals from their supreme court, which had been fixed by law in their general assembly, were arbitrarily revoked to England, to be there heard before the king and council. Instead of four hundred miles on the sea coast, they were reduced, in the space of about thirty years, to about one hundred miles. Their trade with foreigners was totally suppressed, and when carried to Great Britain, was there loaded with imposts. It is unnecessary, however, to glean up the several instances of injury, as scattered through American and British history, and the more especially as, passing on to the accession of the present king, we shall find specimens of them all, aggravated, multiplied, and crowded within a small compass of time, so as to evince a fixed design of considering our rights natural, conventional, and chartered, as mere nullities." &c.

Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

Thus much for the coercive powers of the common. wealth of England, and of the English government. I will close this chapter with a sketch of the remarks of the same illustrious author, upon the particular customs and manners of Virginia.

In the Introductory Remarks of this work, the origin of African slavery has been noticed, and the causes that produced it; the effects that have resulted from this barba rous trafic, upon the colony of Virginia, are thus strikingly illustrated by the pen of a Jefferson, whose means of correct information cannot be doubted, and whose powers of correct reasoning cannot be surpassed.

"It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passions towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious. peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesmen be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and

these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves, a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that consid. ering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest-But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible.-The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."

Such were the correct sentiments of the illustrious sage of Monticello, and such were the sentiments of Washington, the father of his country, who evinced the sincerity of his sentiments upon this momentous subject by emancipating all his slaves; and who lived to witness the joy his benevolent mind had imparted to others, as free by nature as himself; as well as the illustrious example he had given for the good of his country and of the world, together with the purity and justice of his heart.

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

CHAPTER VII.

VIRGINIA CONTINUED,

[ocr errors]

THE limits of this work will not permit me to pursue the civil history of Virginia in its regular course, without rejecting such historical remarks as have fallen under the notice of Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia; I have therefore omitted the former, and adopted the latter, as being more interesting and useful.

As the red men of America constitute a very important feature in the history of the United States, I have endeavoured to incorporate their history into that of the several colonies to which they belonged, and with whose history they were more immediately connected. The Indians of Virginia have not been particularly noticed; I will now devote this chapter to a general view of their history, in connection with the colony of Virginia, as well as with the red men of the United States at large, west of the Hudson. River.

To do justice to this interesting subject, as well as to its illustrious author, I will here insert at large, the following extract from Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

"When the first effectual settlement of our colony was made, which was in 1607, the country from the sea-coast to the mountains, and from the Patowmac to the most southern waters of James' River, was occupied by upwards of forty different tribes of Indians. Of those the Powhatans, the Mannahoacs, and the Monacans, were the most powerful. Those between the sea-coast and falls of the rivers, were in amity with each other, and attached to VOL. II.

10

« AnteriorContinuar »