Dissertation on Slavery / With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia

Transcribers' note: Original spelling has been maintained and not standardized; footnotes were renumbered for consistency.
BY ST. GEORGE TUCKER, PROFESSOR OF LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WILLIAM AND MARY, AND ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE GENERAL COURT, IN VIRGINIA .
Slavery not only violates the Laws of Nature, and of civil Society, it also wounds the best Forms of Government: in a Democracy, where all Men are equal, Slavery is contrary to the Spirit of the Constitution.
MONTESQUIEU.
PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED FOR MATHEW CAREY, No. 118, Market-Street. 1796.
TO THE General Assembly of Virginia ,
To whom it belongs to decide upon the expediency and practicability of a plan for the gradual abolition of Slavery in this commonwealth,
The following pages are most respectfully submitted and inscribed,
BY THE AUTHOR.
Williamsburg, in Virginia, May 20, 1796.
The following pages form a part of a course of Lectures on Law and Police, delivered in the University of William and Mary, in this commonwealth. The Author considering the Abolition of Slavery in this State, as an object of the first importance, not only to our moral character and domestic peace, but even to our political salvation; and being persuaded that the accomplishment of so momentous and desirable an undertaking will in great measure depend upon the early adoption of some plan for that purpose, with diffidence submits to the consideration of his countrymen his ideas on a subject of such consequence. He flatters himself that the plan he ventures to suggest, is liable to fewer objections than most others that have been submitted to the consideration of the public, as it will be attended with a gradual change of condition in the blacks, and cannot possibly affect the interest either of creditors, or any other description of persons of the present generation: and posterity he makes no doubt will feel themselves relieved from a perilous and grievous burden by the timely adoption of a plan, whose operation may be felt by them, before they are borne down by a weight which threatens destruction to our happiness both public and private.