[235] This is my judgment after a careful investigation of the Friends’ records. Adam Smith, who had not seen these records, but who wrote just when the work was being completed, thought differently. Wealth of Nations (ed. Rogers), I, 391.
[236] Other sects followed the example of the Friends, cf. Ebeling, IV, 220, but their work was mostly significant in connection with the legislative work of the Assembly. For the effects of the work of the Friends cf. Bowden, History of the Friends, II, 221.
[237] Votes and Proceedings, 1767–1776, p. 696.
[238] 1 Pa. Arch., VII, 79; Journal of House of Rep., 1776–1781, p. 311.
[239] Col. Rec., XII, 99; Pa. Packet, Sept. 16, 1779; Journals of House, 1776–1781, pp. 392, 394, 399, 412, 424, 435; Packet, Mar. 13, 1779; Dec. 25, 1779; Jan. 1, 1780; Gazette, Dec. 29, 1779; Vaux, Memoirs of Benezet, 92. The distribution of the vote seems to have had no political, no religious, and probably no economic significance. The measure was popular in and out of the Assembly. Packet, Dec. 25, 1779; Jour. of House, 1776–1781, p. 435. An earlier bill had been published in the Packet, Mar. 4, 1779. It is very interesting. The bill as finally drafted became the first act for the abolition of slavery in the United States. Accordingly its authors had to do much original and constructive work. In the course of the work their ideas underwent some change, and the transition is easily seen in comparing the first bill of 1779 with the act as passed in 1780. In some respects the first is more liberal than the second; in other respects less so. Thus at first it was intended to make the children of slaves servants until twenty-one only. (Packet, Mar. 4, 1779). “A Citizen” discussing this objected that the master would receive inadequate compensation for rearing negro children, and urged that the age limit be made twenty-eight or even thirty. (Packet, Mar. 13, 1779), and so pay for the unproductive years, which was but just. The law made the age twenty-eight. On the other hand it was at first proposed to continue the prohibition of intermarriage and the permission to bind out idle free negroes. (Packet, Mar. 4, 1779). Both these provisions were omitted from the law.
[240] Stat. at L., X, 67–73; 2 Sergeant and Rawle, 305–309. Many of the Friends thought that negroes ought not to be held after they were twenty-one. Cf. MS. Rec. Pa. Soc. Abol. Sl., I, 23. Very many masters lost their negroes through failing to register them, through ignorance of the provision requiring registry, or through carelessness in complying with it. Cf. Rush, Considerations upon the Present Test-Law, (2nd ed.), 7 (note); Journals of House, 1776–1781, p. 537, and following; 4 Pa. Arch., III, 822. Cf. Christopher Marshall’s Remembrancer, F, Oct. 10, 1780: ... “gott our Negro Recorded.” Cf. York Herald, Apr. 26, 1797. The limit was extended to Jan. 1, 1783, in favor of the citizens of Washington and Westmoreland counties, previously under the jurisdiction of Virginia. Stat. at L., X, 463. Runaways from other states were of course not made free by this provision. Cf. sect. VIII of act.
[241] The repeal of this section was proposed the next year, but failed by three votes. Cf. Journals of House, 1776–1781, p. 605. It was finally repealed in 1847.
[242] Sect. X of act.
[243] For the view that it was drafted by William Lewis, cf. Pa. Mag., XIV, 14; Robert E. Randall, Speech on the Laws of the State relative to Fugitive Slaves, 6; Horace Binney, Leaders of the Old Bar of Philadelphia, 25. There can be little doubt, however, that full credit should be given to Bryan. “He framed and executed the ‘act’” ... Obituary notice in the Gazette, Feb. 2, 1791. Cf. inscription on his tomb-stone, copy in Inscriptions in the Burying Ground of the Second Presbyterian Church Phila. (MS. H. S. P.); Mem. Hist. Soc. Pa., I, 408–410; Konkle, Life and Times of Thomas Smith, 105.
[244] Vermont had forbidden slavery by her constitution of 1777. Poore, II, 1859.