Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/591

.] General Assembly should make final provision therein. This act directed all quitrents, thereafter becoming due, to be paid into the public treasury; so that, with respect to his descendants, this act confiscated the quitrents. In the year 1783, an act passed restoring to the legal representative of the proprietor the quitrents due to him at the time of his death. But in the year 1785 another act passed, by which the inhabitants of the Northern Neck are exonerated and discharged from paying composition and quitrents to the commonwealth. This last act has completely confiscated this property. It is repugnant to no part of the treaty, with respect to the quitrents confiscated by the act of 1782.

I ask the Convention of the free people of Virginia if there can be honesty in rejecting the government because justice is to be done by it? I beg the honorable gentleman to lay the objection to his heart—let him consider it seriously and attentively. Are we to say that we shall discard this government because it would make us all honest? Is this to be the language of the select representatives of the free people of Virginia?

An honorable gentleman observed, to-day, that there is no instance where foreigners have this advantage over the citizens. What is the reason of this? Because a Virginian creditor may go about for a lamentable number of years before he can get justice, while foreigners will get justice immediately. What is the remedy? Honesty. Remove the procrastination of justice, make debts speedily payable, and the evil goes away. But you complain of the evil because you will not remove it. If a foreigner can recover his debts in six months, why not make a citizen do so? There will then be reciprocity. This term is not understood. Let America be compared to any nation with which she has connection, and see the difference with respect to justice. I am sorry to make the comparison; but the truth is that, in those nations, justice is obtained with much more facility than in America.

Gentlemen will perhaps ask me, Why, if you know the Constitution to be ambiguous, will you vote for it? I answer, that I see a power which will be probably exercised to remedy this defect. The style of the ratification will remove this mischief. I do not ask for this concession—that human nature is just and absolutely honest. But I am fair