t Constitution of the Unitied States; and by that
law it prohibited its own citizens, under severe penalties, from
engaging in the trade, and declared all policies of insurance on the
vessel or cargo made in the State to be null and void. But up to the
time of the adoption of the Constitution, there is nothing in the
legislation of the State indicating any change of opinion as to the
relative rights and position of the white and black races in this
country, or indicating that it meant to place the latter, when free,
upon a level with its citizens. And certainly nothing which would have
led the slaveholding States to suppose that Connecticut designed to
claim for them, under the new Constitution, the equal rights and
privileges and rank of citizens in every other State.

The first step taken by Connecticut upon this subject was as early as
1774, when it passed an act forbidding the further importation of slaves
into the State. But the section containing the prohibition is introduced
by the following preamble:

"And whereas the increase of slaves in this State is injurious to the
poor, and inconvenient."

This recital would appear to have been carefully introduced, in order to
prevent any misunderstanding of the motive which induced the Legislature
to pass the law, and places it distinctly upon the interest and
convenience of the white population--excluding the inference that it
might have been intended in any degree for the benefit of the other.

And in the act of 1784, by which the issue of slaves, born after the
time therein mentioned, were to be free at a certain age, the section is
again introduced by a preamble assigning a similar motive for the act.
It is in these words:

"Whereas sound policy requires that the abolition of slavery should be
effected as soon as may be consistent with the rights of individuals,
and the public safety and welfare"--showing that the right of property
in the master was to be protected, and that the measure was one of
policy, and to prevent the injury and inconvenience, to the whites, of a
slave population in the State.

And still further pursuing its legislation, we find that in the same
statute passed in 1774, which prohibited the further importation of
slaves into the State, there is also a provision by which any negro,
Indian, or mulatto servant, who was found wandering out of the town or
place to which he belonged, without a written pass such as is therein
described, was made