OCR Text |
Show 222 DESPOTIS!'ol any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with t he means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Upon "the basis and foundation, of this Declaration of Rights, the convention proceeded to erect a" constitution, or form of government," in which it was provided that the "common law of England," and all statutes of parliament not local in their character, made in aid of the common law prior to the settlement of Virginia, "together with the several acts of the General Assembly of this colony now in fo>·ce, so far as the sarne may consist with the several ordinances, declarations, and resolutions of the general convention, shall be considered as in full force until the same shall be altered by the legislative power of this colony." But this provision could give no validity to the colonial acts for the establishment of slavery; in the first place, because those acts, legally speaking, were not in force, and never had been, being void from the beginning, enacted in defiance of great principles of the English law, by which the powers of the colonial assembly were restricted; and in the second place, because they did not and could not consist with the above quoted "declaration," laid down by the convention itself as "the basis and foundation" of the new government. Immediately after the adoption of this constitution, provision was made for revising the laws of Virginia, and a committee was appointed for that purpose; but nothing was done till 1785, when several bills prepared by the committee of revision were sanctioned by the assembly and enacted as laws. In one of these acts it was provided, "that no persons shall henceforth be slaves in this commonwealth, except such as were so on the first day of this present ses· sion of assembly, and the descendants of the fem~les of them." 'rhis act, embodied into the codification of 1792, still remains in force; and through it all legal titles to slave property in Virginia must be IN AMERICA. 223 traced. But i.n 1785, there were no persons Ie all !tcld as slaves 111 Virg~nia. The practice 011 this~<;u~ Ject, and the acts of L?c colonial a!:!scmbly which countenanced that pracltce, were contradictory to the law of England, :'llways binding on the colonial assembly, and spec1ally adopted by the revolutionary g~wernment as the law of Virginia; and contra. clJCtory, . al::;o, to those general principles and that declaratwn of natural rights specially adopted as "th~ bas1s and. fonnd~tion " of the new government. .'II~e. convention whLCh framed t he constitut.ion of Vugmm was far from conferring, or from claiming any power to confer, on the assembly any authority to re?':lce any of the inhabitants of that state to a COI~d1~1011 of slavery. The assembly was far from cla1m~n~ the possession of any snch power, or from attemptmg to add any thinO' to the Ieard basis upon which slavery rested prior to the Rev~ution. It remamed then what it had been in colonial times a I"?erc. us~rpation, without any legal basis; a usuq;a. !Jon 111 d~rect defiance of the Declaration of Rig hts ~pheld by mere force and terror, and the overwhelm~ tng pow_er and influence of the masters, without law and agamst law. Th~ convention of Maryland, (which upon the breaki_ng out of hostilities with the mother country had d•splaccd the proprietary government,) following 111 the footsteps of Virginia, adopted, on the 3d of November, 1776, a Declaration of Rights, the introductory part of a new constitution, in which they declared, "tl~at all government of right originates from th.e people; IS founded in compact only, and is con· st1tuted s?lely for the good of the whole;" and "that the mhabttants of Maryland are entitled to the common law of. England ; to ail English statutes appli~ cable to their situation, passed before the settlement of Maryland, and introduced and practised on in the ~olouy; and also to all acts ~f the old colonial assem-ly "in force" on the 1st of June, 1774. But the |