EFFORTS TO EXCLUDE SLAVES
With the great increase of this element in the population, the colonists were quick to realize their danger[[6]] and numerous acts were passed by the Colonial Legislature designed to lessen, if not actually to stop, further importations. Alluding to these efforts of the Virginia people, Mr. Bancroft says:
"Again and again they had passed laws restraining the importation of negroes from Africa, but their laws were disallowed. How to prevent them from protecting themselves against the increase of the overwhelming evil was debated by the King in Council; and on the 10th of December, 1770, he issued an instruction under his own hand commanding the Governor 'upon pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no laws by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed.'"[[7]]
Edmund Burke, in his speech on conciliating America, in response to the suggestion that the slaves might be freed and used against the colonies, said,
"Dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from the very nation which had sold them to their present masters—from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic. An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola Negroes."[[8]]
In addition to legislative enactments, appeals were addressed directly to the throne. But the great personages interested in the slave trade proved more influential with the King than the prayers of his imperilled people. There is something at once pathetic and prophetic in the appeals made by these Virginians to their sovereign against the slave trade. The petition presented by the House of Burgesses in 1772 recites:
"We implore your Majesty's paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most alarming nature. The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement we have too much reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your Majesty's American dominions. We are sensible that some of your Majesty's subjects may reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of the colonies with more useful inhabitants and may in time have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope that the interests of a few will be disregarded when placed in competition with the security and happiness of such numbers of your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects. We, therefore, beseech your Majesty to remove all these restraints on your Majesty's Governor in this colony which inhibits their assenting to such laws as might check so pernicious a consequence."[[9]]
This petition was reported from a Committee of the House which included Edmund Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison and others of equal prominence.[[10]]
But the King and Ministers continued to turn deaf ears and except with respect to more moderate measures the Royal Veto was interposed to annul all anti-slavery laws.
ORIGINAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE