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spite of thirty days to implore the clemency of the executive authority.—It may be urged, and I believe with truth, that these rigours do net proceed from a sanguinary temper in the people of Virginia, but from those political considerations indispensibly necessary, where slavery prevails to any great extent: I am moreover happy to observe that our police respecting this unhappy class of people, is not only less rigorous than formerly, but perhaps milder than in any other country[1] where there are so many slaves, or so large a proportion of them, in respect to the free inhabitants: it is also, I trust, unjust to censure the present generation for the existence of slavery in Virginia: for I think it unquestionably true, that a very laree proportion of our fellow-citizens lament that as a misfortune, which is imputed to them as a reproach; it being evident from what has been already shewn upon the subject, that, ante-
- ↑ See Jefferson’s Notes, 259.—The Marquis de Chatelleux’s Travels, I have not noted the page; the Law of Retribution, by Granville Sharpe, pa. 151, 238, notes. The Just Limitation of Slavery, by the same author; pa. 15, note. Ibidem, pa. 34, 50. Ib. Append. No. 2. Encyclopédie. Tit. Esclave. Laws of Barbadoes, &c.
