n, must the convention of 1790 be supposed to have used the term?
questionless in that which it had acquired by use in public acts and
legal proceedings, for the reason that a dubious staite is to be
expounded by usage. `The meaning of things spoken and written, must be
as hath been constantly received.' (Vaugh. 169.) On this principle, it
is difficult to discover how the word freeman, as used in previous
public acts, could have been meant to comprehend a coloured race: as
well might it be supposed, that the declaration of universal and
unalienable freedom in both our constitutions was meant to comprehend
it. Nothing was ever more comprehensively predicted, and a practical
enforcement of it would have liberated every slave in the State; yet
mitigated slavery long continued to exist among us, in derogation of it.
Rules of interpretation demand a strictly verbal construction of
nothing but a penal statute; and a constitution is to be construed still
more liberally than even a remedial one, because a convention
legislating for masses, can do little more than mark an outline of
fundamental principles, leaving the interior gyrations and details to be
filled up by ordinary legislation. `Conventions intended to regulate
the conduct of nations,' said Chief Justice Tilghman, in the Farmers'
Bank versus Smith, 3 Sergt. and Rawl. 69, `are not to be construed like
articles of agreement at the common law. It is of little importance to
the public, whether a tract of land belongs to A or B. In deciding
these titles, strict rules of construction may be adhered to; and it is
best that they should be adhered to, though sometimes at the expense of
justice. But where multitudes are to be affected by the construction of
an amendment, great regard is to be paid to the spirit and intention.'
What better key to these, than the tone of antecedent legislation
discoverable in the application of the disputed terms.

"But in addition to interpretation from usage, this antecedent
legislation furnishes other proofs that no coloured race was party to
our social compact. As was justly remarked by President Fox, in the
matter of the late contested election, our ancestors settled the
province as a community of white men, and the blacks were introduced
into it as a race of slaves, whence an unconquerable prejudice of caste,
which has come down to our day, insomuch that a suspicion of taint still
has the unjust effect of sinking the subject of it