The bill on the subject of slaves, was a mere digest of the existing
laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and
general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept
back, and attempted only by way of amendment, whenever the bill should
be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, were agreed
on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and
deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would
not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet
the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will
follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that
these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two
races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit,
opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It
is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and
deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the evil will
wear off insensibly, and their place be, _pari passu_, filled up by
free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain
look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors.
This precedent would fall far short of our case.

I considered four of these bills, passed or reported, as forming a
system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future
aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.
The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and
perpetuation of wealth, in select families, and preserve the soil of
the country from being daily more and more absorbed in mortmain. The
abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances, removed
the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every