ssion will create alarm, we ought to have avoided it, by
saying nothing; but it was not for that purpose that we were sent
here, we look upon this measure as an attack upon the palladium of the
property of our country; it is therefore our duty to oppose it by
every means in our power. Gentlemen should consider that when we
entered into a political connexion with the other States, that this
property was there; it was acquired under a former government,
conformably to the laws and Constitution; therefore anything that will
tend to deprive them of that property, must be an _ex post facto_ law,
and as such is forbid by our political compact.

I said the States would never have entered into the confederation,
unless their property had been guaranteed to them, for such is the
state of agriculture in that country, that without slaves it must be
depopulated. Why will these people then make use of arguments to
induce the slave to turn his hand against his master? We labor under
difficulties enough from the ravages of the late war. A gentleman can
hardly come from that country, with a servant or two, either to this
place or Philadelphia, but what there are persons trying to seduce his
servants to leave him; and, when they have done this, the poor
wretches are obliged to rob their master in order to obtain a
subsistence; all those, therefore, who are concerned in this
seduction, are accessaries to the robbery.

The reproaches which they cast upon the owners of negro property, is
charging them with the want of humanity; I believe the proprietors are
persons of as much humanity as any part of the continent and are as
conspicuous for their good morals as their neighbors. It was said
yesterday, that the Quakers were a society known to the laws, and the
Constitution, but they are no more so than other religious societies;
they stand exactly in the same situation; their memorial, therefore,
relates to a matter in which they are no more interested than any
other sect, and can only be considered as a piece of advice; it is
customary to refer a piece of advice to a committee, but if it is
supposed to pray for what they think a moral purpose, is that
sufficient to induce us to commit it? What may appear a moral virtue
in their eyes, may not be so in reality. I have heard of a sect of
Shaking Quakers, who, I presume, suppose their tenets of a moral
tendency; I am informed one of them forbids to intermarry, yet in
consequence of their shaki