plore the necessity of holding our fellow-men in
bondage. But is it practicable, by any human means, to liberate them
without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences?"
Elliott's Debates, Va., pp. 590, 591.

George Mason, in the same convention, speaking against article 1,
section 9, of the Constitution, which forbids Congress from
prohibiting the importation of slaves before the year 1808, said: "It
[the importation of slaves] was one of the great causes of our
separation from Great Britain. Its exclusion has been a principal
object of this State, and most of the States of the Union. The
augmentation of slaves weakens the States; and such a trade is
diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind: yet, by this
Constitution, it is continued for twenty years. As much as I value a
union of all the States, I would not admit the Southern States into
the Union, unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful
trade, because it brings weakness, and not strength, to the Union."
Elliott's Debates, Va., p. 452.

[11] Mr. Jefferson's doubts, and his timidity, as a person of
political aspirations, in treating the subject of slavery in a
practical manner, reduced his conduct to the verge of cowardice, if
not of duplicity. While writing to Dr. Price in this assured tone, and
urging him to exhort the young men of the College of William and Mary,
on the evils of slavery, he was afraid to have these same students see
what he had himself written on the same subject, in his "Notes on
Virginia." M. de Chastelleux had written to him, desiring to print
some extracts from the "Notes on Virginia," in the _Journal de
Physique_. Mr. Jefferson replied, June 7, 1785, only two months before
he wrote the above letter to Dr. Price, saying: "I am not afraid that
you should make any extracts you please for the _Journal de Physique_,
which come within their plan of publication. The strictures on
slavery, and on the constitution of Virginia, are not of that kind and
they are the parts which I do not wish to have made public; at least,
till I know whether their publication would do most harm or good. It
is possible that, in my own country, these strictures might produce an
irritation which would indispose the people toward the two great
objects I have in view; that is, the emancipation of their slaves, and
the settlement of their constitution on a firmer and more permanent
basis. If I learn from thence that they will not produce