ltogether a burden
on the community. Pursuing no course of regular business, and
negligent of everything like economy and husbandry, they are as a part
of the community, supported by the productive industry of others.

"But their residence among us is yet more objectionable on other
accounts. It is incompatible with the tranquility of society; their
apparent exemption from want and care and servitude to business,
excites impracticable hopes in the minds of those who are even more
ignorant and unreflecting--and their locomotive habits fit them for a
dangerous agency in schemes, wild and visionary, but disgusting and
annoying.

"We would not be cruel and unchristian--but we must take care of the
interests and morals of society, and of the peace of mind of the
helpless in our families. It is indispensable to the happiness of the
latter, that this cause of apprehension be removed. And efforts to
this end are, we firmly believe, sanctioned by enlightened humanity
toward the ill-fated class to whom we allude. They can never have the
respect and intercourse here which are essential to rational
happiness, and social enjoyment and improvement. But in other lands
they may become an orderly, sober, industrious, moral, enlightened and
christian community; and be the happy instruments of planting and
diffusing those blessings over a barbarous and benighted continent.

"Your petitioners will not designate a plan of legislative
operation--they leave to the wisdom and provident forecast of the
General Assembly, the conception and the prosecution of the best
practicable scheme--but they would respectfully and earnestly ask that
the action of the laws passed to this effect be decisive, and the
means energetic--such as shall, with as much speed as may be, free our
country from this bane of its prosperity, morality and peace."--_The
Richmond Enquirer_, Oct. 21, 1831.

[23] _The Journal of the House of Delegates_, 1831, pp. 1-123.

[24] _The Journal of the House of Delegates_, 1831, pp. 41, 56, 119.

[25] _Ibid._, 1831, p. 93.

[26] _The Journal of the House of Delegates_, 1831, p. 93.

[27] _Ibid._, p. 93.

[28] _Ibid._, p. 125.

[29] _The Richmond Enquirer_, Jan. 7, 1832.

[30] Drewry, _The Southampton Insurrection_, p. 165.

[31] _The Richmond Enquirer_, Dec. 17, 1831.

[32] _Ibid._, Nov. 18, 1831.

[33] _The Journal of the House of Delegates_, 1831, p. 110.

[34] Before the insurrection free men of color voted in Nort