Mr. Jefferson was elected a member of this convention, but was prevented from attending by the state of his health. In the interval before the meeting he prepared instructions for the Virginia delegates in congress, in which he assumed the ground that the British parliament had no right whatever to exercise any authority over the colony of Virginia. These instructions being communicated through the president of the convention, Peyton Randolph, were generally read and approved of by many, though considered too bold for the present. But they printed them in a pamphlet, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America."[575:C] The following excerpts are taken from it: "History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny." "Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has involved us before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on us." "The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest; only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another, but deal out to all equal and impartial right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on the rights and liberties of another." "Accept of every commercial preference it is in our power to give for such things as we can raise for their use, or they make for ours. But let them not think to exclude us from going to other markets to dispose of those commodities which they cannot use, or to supply those wants which they cannot supply."
On the subject of slavery Mr. Jefferson used the following language: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa, yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."
In consonance with these opinions, the convention adopted the following resolution: "After the first day of November next we will neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."
Mr. Jefferson's pamphlet displays a thorough knowledge of the history and constitutional rights of the colony; it breathes a fiery spirit of defiance and revolution, and the rhythmical splendor of elevated declamation in some of its passages is hardly inferior to Junius. If some of its statements and views are extravagant or erroneous, yet it is bold, acute, comprehensive, luminous, and impressive. This pamphlet, it is said, found its way to England, was taken hold of by the opposition, interpolated a little by Edmund Burke, so as to make it answer opposition purposes, and in that form it ran through several editions.
FOOTNOTES:
[572:A] May twenty-fourth.
[573:A] The Raleigh tavern, a wooden house, is upwards of a hundred years old. There was formerly a bust of Sir Walter Raleigh in front of the house. The ball-room in the Raleigh was styled "The Apollo." There was a tavern in London called "The Apollo" in 1690.
[575:A] August eleventh.
[575:B] Life and Works of John Adams, ii. 360.