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CONSISTENCY OF LAFAYETTE.

"After the decisive campaign against Lord Cornwallis, in 1781, Lafayette, on receiving the thanks of the State of Virginia, which had particularly profited by his successes, replied, by the expression of a wish, that liberty might be speedily extended to all men, without distinction. But, he was not contented with sterile wishes, and on his return to France, flattering himself, like Turgot and Poivre, that the gradual emancipation of the negroes, might be conciliated with the personal interests of the colonists; he was desirous of establishing the fact by experience, and for that purpose, he tried a special experiment, on a scale sufficiently large to put the question to the test. At that period, the Intendant of Cayenne was a man of skill, probity, and experience, named Lescalier, whose opinions on the subject coincided with those of Lafayette. Marshal de Castries, the minister of the Marine, not only consented to the experiment, but determined to aid it, by permitting Lescalier to try upon the king's negroes the new regime projected. Lafayette had at first devoted one hundred thousand francs to this object. He confided the management of the residence which he had purchased at Cayenne, to a man distinguished for philosophy and talent, named Richeprey, who generously devoted himself to the direction of the experiment. The Seminarists established a colony, and above all, the Abbé Farjon, the curate of it, applauded and encouraged the measure. It is but justice to the colonists of Cayenne, to say, that the negroes had been treated with more humanity there than elsewhere. Richeprey's six months' stay there, and the example set by him, before he fell a victim to the climate, contributed still further to improve their condition. La Rochefoucault was to purchase another plantation as soon as Richeprey's establishment had met with some success, and a third would afterward have been bought by Malesherbes, who took a cordial intérest in the plan. The untimely death of Richeprey, the difficulty of replacing such a man, the departure of the Intendant, and a change in the ministry, threw obstacles in the way of this noble undertaking. When Lafayette had been proscribed in 1792, the National Contion confiscated all his property, and ordered his negroes to be at Cayenne, in spite of the remonstrances of Madame Lafayette, protested against the sale, observing, that the negroes had been purchased only to be restored to liberty after their instruction, and not to be again sold as objects of trade and speculation. At a later period all the negroes of the French colonies were declared free, by a decree of the National Convention. It is nevertheless remarkable, that some of Lafayette's plans, with regard to the slave emancipation, were realized. Cayenne, the only one of our colonies in which the example set by him of instructing the negroes, had been followed, was also the only colony in which no disorders took place. Urged by gratitude, the negroes of his plantation declared to Richeprey's successor, that if Lafayette's property was confiscated, they would avail them

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selves of their liberty; but that in the opposite case they would remain and continue to cultivate his estates."-Private Life of Gen. Lafayette. Vol. I. page 149.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous pas- ̧¡í sions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another: in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves, a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm! basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep for ever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it.

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may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.-Notes on Virginia.

What an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full-when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness-doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing a light and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length by his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of blind fatality.—Ibid.

LETTER TO DR. PRICE OF London.

PARIS, August 7, 1785.

SIR, Your favor of July 2d came duly to hand. The concern you therein express as to the effect of your pamphlet in America, induces me to trouble you with some observations on that subject. From my acquaintance with that country, I think I am able to judge with some degree of certainty of the manner in which it will have been received. Southward of the Chesapeake, it will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice. A minority, which for weight and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of a property, which, however, keeps their consciences uneasy. Northward of the Chesapeake, you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here and there a robber and a murderer; but in no greater number. In that part of America there being but few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such a train that, in a few years, there will be no slaves northward of Mary

land. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up these have sucked in the principles of liberty, as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of this question. Be not, therefore, discouraged― what you have written will do a great deal of good; and could you still trouble yourself with our welfare, no man is more able to give aid to the laboring side.—The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburgh, since the remodelling of its plan, is the place where are collected together all the young men of Virginia, under preparation for public life. They are there under the direction (most of them) of a Mr Wythe, one of the most virtuous of characters, and whose sentiments on the subject of slavery are unequivocal. I am satisfied, if you could resolve to address an exhortation to those young men, with all that eloquence of which you are master, that its influence on the future decision of this important question would be great, perhaps decisive. Thus, you see, that so far from thinking you have cause to repent of what you have done, I wish you to do more, and wish it on an assurance of its effect. The information I have received from America of the reception of your pamphlet in the different states, agrees with the expectation I had formed.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

LETTER TO Gov. Cole of Illinois.

MONTICELLO, August 25, 1814.

DEAR SIR,-Your favor of July 31st was duly received, and was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed through the whole, do honor to both the head and heart of the writer. Mine, on the subject of the slavery of negroes, have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people; and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain, and should have produced not a single effort,―nay, I fear, not much serious willingness to relieve them and ourselves from our present condition of moral and political reprobation. From those of the former generation, who were in the fulness of age when I came into public life, which was while our controversy with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was to be hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate beings, but not reflecting that that degradation was very much the work of themselves and their fathers, few minds have yet doubted but that they were as legitimate subjects of property as their horses or cattle. The quiet and monotonous course of colonial life had been disturbed

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by no alarm, and little reflection on the value of liberty. And when an alarm was taken at an enterprise of their own, it was not easy to carry them to the whole length of the principles which they invoked for themselves. In the first or second session of the legislature, after I became a member, I drew to this subject the attention of Colonel Bland, one of the oldest, ablest, and most respected members, and he undertook to move for certain moderate extensions of the protection of the laws to these people.' I seconded his motion, and as a younger member, was more spared in the debate; but he was denounced as an enemy to his country, and was treated with the greatest indecorum. From an early stage of our Revolution, other and more distant duties were assigned to me; so that from that time till my return from Europe in 1789, and, I may say, till I returned to reside at home in 1809, I had little opportunity of knowing the progress of public sentiment here on this subject. I had always hoped that the younger generation, receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast, and had become as it were the vital spirit of every American, in the generous temperament of youth, analogous to the motion of their blood, and above the suggestions of avarice, would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it. But my intercourse with them, since my return, has not been sufficient to ascertain that they have made towards this point the progress I had hoped.-Your solitary, but welcome voice, is the first which has brought this sound to my ear; and I have considered the general silence which prevails on this subject as indicating an apathy unfavorable to every hope. Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time.

I am sensible of the partiality with which you have looked towards me as the person who should undertake this salutary but arduous work. But this, my dear sir, is like bidding old Priam to buckle the armor of Hector, "trementibus aevo humeris, et inutile ferrum cingi.” No: I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors and perils begat mutual confidence and influence. This enterprise is for young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers; and these are the only weapons of an old man.

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It is an encouraging observation, that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end. We have proof of this in the history of the endeavors in the British Parliament to suppress that very trade which brought this evil on us. And you will be supported by the religious precept, "be not weary in well doing." That your success may be as speedy and complete, as it will be honorable and immortal consolation to yourself, I shall as fervently and sincerely pray as I assure you of my great friendship and respect.

EDWARD COLE, ESQ.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

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