assemblies (and they seldom met without
attempting them) could succeed in getting the royal assent to a
renewal of the duty. In the very first session held under the
republican government, the assembly passed a law for the
perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This will, in
some measure, stop the increase of this great political and moral
evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a
complete emancipation of human nature.[48]

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire
in those Colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their
infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves
we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from
Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions,
and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have
been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative: Thus preferring
the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting
interests of the American States, and to the rights of human
nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.[49]

With the same thought as that of the views expressed above Jefferson
incorporated into the original Declaration of Independence an
indictment of George III as promoting the ruin of the colonies in
encouraging the slave trade. He said:

He (George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating
and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur
miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical
warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the
CHRISTIAN KING of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market
where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of
horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now
exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering
the people upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former
crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes
whic