t injury of the southern States." Mr.
Hartley, of Pennsylvania said, in the sane debate, "_He was not a little
surprised to hear the cause of slavery advocated in that house._"
WASHINGTON, in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, says, "There are, in
Pennsylvania, laws for the gradual abolition of slavery which neither
Maryland nor Virginia have at present, but which _nothing is more
certain_ than that they _must have_, and at a period NOT REMOTE." In
1782, Virginia passed her celebrated manumission act. Within nine years
from that time nearly eleven thousand slaves were voluntarily
emancipated by their masters. Judge Tucker's "Dissertation on Slavery,"
p. 72. In 1787, Maryland passed an act legalizing manumission. Mr.
Dorsey, of Maryland, in a speech in Congress, December 27th, 1826,
speaking of manumissions under that act, said, that "_The progress of
emancipation was astonishing_, the State became crowded with a free
black population."

The celebrated William Pinkney, in a speech before the Maryland House of
Delegates, in 1789, on the emancipation of slaves, said, "Sir, by the
eternal principles of natural justice, _no master in the state has a
right to hold his slave in bondage for a single hour_. I would as soon
believe the incoherent tale of a schoolboy, who should tell me he had
been frightened by a ghost, as that the grant of this permission (to
emancipate) ought in any degree to alarm us. Are we apprehensive that
these men will become more dangerous by becoming freemen? Are we
alarmed, lest by being admitted into the enjoyment of civil rights, they
will be inspired with a deadly enmity against the rights of others?
Strange, unaccountable paradox! How much more rational would it be, to
argue that the natural enemy of the privileges of a freeman, is he who
is robbed of them himself! Dishonorable to the species is the idea that
they would ever prove injurious to our interests--released from the
shackles of slavery, by the justice of government and the bounty of
individuals--the want of fidelity and attachment would be next to
impossible."

Hon. James Campbell, in an address before the Pennsylvania Society of
the Cincinnati, July 4, 1787, said, "Our separation from Great Britain
has extended the empire of _humanity_. The time _is not far distant_
when our sister states, in imitation of our example, _shall turn their
vassals into freemen._" The Convention that formed the United States'
constitution being then in session,