Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/204

190 To eſtabliſh religious freedom on the broadeſt bottom.

To emancipate all ſlaves born after paſſing the act. The bill reported by the reviſors does not itſelf contain this proportion; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legiſlature whenever the bill ſhould be taken up, and further directing, that they ſhould continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or ſciences, according to their genuiuſſes, till the females ſhould be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they ſhould be colonized to ſuch place as the circumſtances of the time ſhould render moſt proper, ſending them out with arms, implements of houſehold and the handicraft arts, ſeeds, pairs of the uſeful domeſtic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection till they have acquired ſtrength; and to ſend veſſels at the ſame time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants: to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be propoſed. It will probably be aſked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the ſtate, and thus ſave the expence of ſupplying by importation of white ſettlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thouſand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have ſuſtained; new provocations; the real diſtinctions which nature has made; and many other circumſtances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulſions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.—To theſe