nced our action.

"In the first place, it proposed a radical change of our social system,
and was hurried through both Houses with undue haste, without reasonable
time for consideration and debate, and with no time at all for
consultation with our constituents, whose interests it deeply involved.
It seemed like an interference by this Government with a question which
peculiarly and exclusively belonged to our respective States, on which
they had not sought advice or solicited aid.

"Many of us doubted the Constitutional power of this Government to make
appropriations of money for the object designated, and all of us thought
our finances were in no condition to bear the immense outlay which its
adoption and faithful execution would impose upon the National Treasury.
If we pause but a moment to think of the debt its acceptance would have
entailed, we are appalled by its magnitude. The proposition was
addressed to all the States, and embraced the whole number of Slaves.

"According to the census of 1860 there were then nearly four million
Slaves in the Country; from natural increase they exceed that number
now. At even the low average of $300, the price fixed by the
Emancipation Act for the Slaves of this District, and greatly below
their real worth, their value runs up to the enormous sum of
$1,200,000,000; and if to that we add the cost of deportation and
colonization, at $100 each, which is but a fraction more than is
actually paid--by the Maryland Colonization Society, we have
$400,000,000 more.

"We were not willing to impose a tax on our people sufficient to pay the
interest on that sum, in addition to the vast and daily increasing debt
already fixed upon them by exigencies of the War, and if we had been
willing, the Country could not bear it. Stated in this form the
proposition is nothing less than the deportation from the Country of
$1,600,000,000 worth of producing labor, and the substitution, in its
place, of an interest-bearing debt of the same amount.

"But, if we are told that it was expected that only the States we
represent would accept the proposition, we respectfully submit that even
then it involves a sum too great for the financial ability of this
Government at this time. According to the census of 1860:

Slaves
Kentucky had ........... 225,490
Maryland ............... 87,188
Virginia ............... 490,887
Delaware