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trifling reasons, and, sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. ‘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 im- posing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hi- therto defeated by his Majesty’s negative : thus preferrmg the imme- diate advantages of a few British corsairs, to the lastmg interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice. Nay, the single interposition of,an interested individual against a law, was scarcely ever known to fail of success, though, in the opposite scale, were placed the interests of awhole country. ‘That this is so shameful an abuse of a power, trusted with his Majesty for other purposes, as if, not re- formed, would call for some legal restrictions.
With equal inattention to the necessities of his people here, has his Majesty permitted our laws to lie neglected, in England, for years, neither confirming them by his assent, nor annullmg them by his negative : so, that such of them as have no suspending clause, we hold on the most precarious of all tenures, his Majesty’s will; and such of them as suspend themselves till his Majesty’s assent be obtained, we have feared might be called nto existence at some future and distant period, when time and change of circumstances shall have rendered them destructive to his people here. And, to render this grievance still more oppressive, his Majesty, by his in- structions, has laid his Governors under such restrictions, that they can pass no law, of any moment, unless it have such suspending clause: so that, however immediate may be the call for legislative interposition, the law cannot be executed, till it has twice crossed the Atlantic, by which time the evil may have spent its whole force.
But in what terms reconcileable to Majesty, and at the same time to truth, shall we speak of a late instruction to his Majesty’s Governor of the colony of Virgmia, by which he is forbidden to assent to any law for the division of a county, unless the new county will consent to have no representative in Assembly ? ‘That colony has as yet affixed no boundary to the Westward. Their Western counties, therefore, are of indefinite extent. Some of them are actually seated many hundred miles from their Eastern limits. Is it possible, then, that his Majesty can have bestowed a single thought on the situation of those people, who, in order to obtain justice for injuries, however great or small, must, by the
