Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/44

408 manumission to their slaves, and from investigation they were of the opinion that 67, instead of 386, constituted the number of slaves existing in 1830. We have remarked that George Bryan was the author of the Act of 1780. abolishing slavery in Pennsylvania. It has, however, been stated that it was the current report at the Bar, at the beginning of the present century, and at the close of the last, that the late William Lewis was its draughtsman. To us, it seems that no one can read Mr. Bryan's Message to the Assembly, already quoted, and the Preamble to the Act, without being struck with a similarity in sentiment and style. His feelings had long been deeply concerned for the welfare of these poor creatures; and, as the first who officially suggested abolition, common opinion, if expressed at all upon the occasion, would, as a matter of course, have pointed to him as the proper person to draught the bill, nor are the terms and character of its clauses such as that any one, thoroughly skilled in legislation and familiar with the subject, might not as readily have drawn as Mr. Bryan. The Preamble required higher powers, and as to his abilities for the whole task, if any doubt exists, Mr. Bryan appears to have possessed them in an eminent degree. He is described, in an "Extract" from a Funeral Discourse upon his death, preached January 30th, 1791, by the Rev. Dr. Ewing, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and to be found in the IX. Vol. of Carey's American Museum, p. 81, of the same year, "As formed by nature for a close application to study, animated with an ardent thirst for knowledge, and blessed with a memory surprisingly tenacious, and the uncommon attendant, a clear, penetrating, and decisive judgment; his mind was the storehouse of extensive information on a great variety of subjects. Thus endowed and qualified, he was able, on most occasions, to avail himself of the labors and acquisitions, the researches and decisions of the most distinguished luminaries that had finished their course and set before him. You could, therefore, with confidence, generally depend upon his judgment as the last result of laborious investigation and mature decision. And if you add to these natural and acquired endowments, the moral virtues and dispositions of his heart, his benevolence and sympathy with the distressed, his unaffected humility and easiness of access upon all occasions, his readiness to forgive, and his godlike superiority to the injuries of a misjudging world (in imitation of his divine Muster, who, when he was reviled, reviled not again), his inflexible integrity in the administration of justice, together with his