It was abolished in Massachusetts,
without doubt, by a clause, in the bill of rights, copied from the
Declaration of Independence. In Berkshire, one township, he believed,
sued another for the support and maintenance of a pauper slave, and the
Supreme Court decided that the bill of rights abolished slavery. The
question was as incidental, he said, as was the question in the Dred
Scott case which the United States Supreme Court decided. This
Massachusetts case was previous to any reports of decisions, and he had
some doubt as to the form in which the suit was brought, but was sure as
to the decision. The question as to abolishing slavery was not submitted
to the people, nor to a Convention, nor to the Legislature.

"I was specially interested in his account of the way in which the
slave-trade was prohibited by our excellent sister, Connecticut. It was
done by a section prohibiting the importation of slaves by sea or land,
preceded by the following preamble:--'And whereas the increase of slaves
in this state is injurious to the poor, and inconvenient, Be it
therefore enacted.' Another section of the same statute, he said, was
preceded by the following words:--'And 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, Be it enacted,' etc. Then follows the provision that all black
and mulatto children, born in slavery, in that state, after the first of
March, 1784, shall be free at twenty-five years of age. Selling slaves,
to be carried out of the state, was not prohibited before May, 1792;
thus allowing more than eight years to the owners of slaves in
Connecticut to sell their slaves to Southern purchasers! 'There seems to
me,' he said, 'no evidence of superior humanity in this; nor was it
repentance for slavery as a sin.' He thought that if we feel compelled,
by our superior conscientiousness, to require any duty of the South, all
that decency will allow us to demand is, that she tread in our steps.

"'I think,' said a planter, 'that if pity is due from one to the other,
the South owes the larger debt to the North. There needs to be a great
reformation, namely, The Gradual Emancipation of the Northern Mind from
"Anti-slavery" Error.'

"'Our English friends, in their zeal against American slavery,' said a
young lawyer, 'seem to forget that the English government, at the Peace
of Utrecht, agreed to fu