lay
and Caldwell) that there was nothing in the proposition
submitted to consideration which in the smallest degree
touches another very important and delicate question, which
ought to be left as much out of view as possible, (Negro
Slavery.)[20]

"There was no fear, Mr. R. said, that this proposition would
alarm the slave-holders; they had been accustomed to think
seriously of the subject. There was a popular work on
agriculture, by John Taylor of Carolina, which was widely
circulated, and much confided in, in Virginia. In that book,
much read because coming from a practical man, this
description of people, [referring to us half free ones,]
were pointed out as a great evil. They had indeed been held
up as the greater bug-bear to every man who feels an
inclination to emancipate his slaves, not to create in the
bosom of his country so great a nuisance. If a place could
be provided for their reception, and a mode of sending them
hence, there were hundreds, nay thousands of citizens, who
would, by manumitting their slaves, relieve themselves from
the cares attendant on their possession. The great
slave-holder, Mr. R. said, was frequently a mere sentry at
his own door--bound to stay on his plantation to see that
his slaves were properly treated, &c. Mr. R. concluded by
saying that he had thought it necessary to make these
remarks, being a slave-holder himself, to show that, so far
from being connected with abolition of slavery, the measure
proposed would prove one of greatest securities to enable
the master to keep in possession his own property."

Here is a demonstrative proof, of a plan got up by a gang of
slave-holders to select the free people of colour from among the
slaves, that our more miserable brethren may be the better secured in
ignorance and wretchedness, to work their farms and dig their mines,
and thus go on enriching the christians with their blood and groans.
What our brethren could have been thinking about, who have left their
native land and home and gone away to Africa I am unable to say. This
country is as much ours as it is the whites, whether they will admit
it now or not, they will see and believe it by and by. They tell us
about prejudice--what have we to do with it? Their prejudices will be
obliged to fall like lightning to the ground, in succeeding
genera