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exult in the countenance their cause has received from him, who was ever foremost to assert the rights of his fellow men; the venerated author of the Declaration of 11 dependence, and of the Act of Religious Freedom. When those rights are brought in question, they know of none whose sentiments are worthy of higher estimation. To none among the founders of our Republic, are we indebted for more in its institutions, that is admirable in theory, or valuable in practice. His nume is identified with the independence of his country; with all that is liberal and enlightened in her policy. Never had liberty an advocate of more unaffected zeal; of more splendid abilities; of purer principles. Nor is there in ancient or modern times, an example to be found of one, who in his life and conduct, more strongly exemplified the sincerity of his faith, or more brightly illustrated the beauty of his tenets,

Your memorialists could not on this cecasion, in justice to themselves, omit all allusion to the avowed sentiments of this illustrious Statesman, nor withhold from his memory, a passing tribute of admiration and gratitude.

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Dreading the influence of the doctrines and opinions now adverted to, conscious of the futility of any attempt to reconele with them their favorite policy, the enemies of extended suffrage have not hesitated to deride them as the crude conceptions of visionary politicians. The Bill of Rights, until it became necessary for their purposes to assail it, the theme of unqualified approbation, whilst they affect to admire the beauty of its theory, they paradoxically assert, tends in practice to mischievous results, principles, they cannot deny, are founded in truth and justice. But these practical politicians look to a higher sanction, and sacrifice without remorse both justice and truth on the altar of expediency. Would it not be well they should enlighten the world with a systein of their own, which shou d conform to the practice they would approve, and substitute the exploded theories of the wisest Statesinen, the purest Patriots, and the soundest Republicans, who ever adorned any a e or country,

But not to the authority of great names merely, does the existing restriction upon suffrage stand opposed: reason and justice equally condemn it. The object, it is presumed, meant to be attained, was, as far as practicable, to admit the meritorious, and reject the unworthy. And had this object really been attaine, wiritever opinions might prevail as to the mere right, not a muimur probably would have been heard. Surely it were much to b desired that every citizen should be qualified for the proper exercise of all his rights, and the due performance of all lús duties. But the some qualifications that entitle him to assume the management of his private nifairs, and to claim all other privileges of citizenship, equally entitle him, in the judgment o, your memorialists, to be entrusted with this, the dearest of all his privileges, the most important of all his concerns. But if otherwise, stid they cannot discern in the possession of land any evidence of peculiar merit, or superior title. To ascribe to a binded possession, anoral or intellectual endowments, would truly be regarded as ludicrous, were it not for the gravity with which the proposition is maintained, and still more for the grave consequences flowing from it. Such possession no more proves him who has it, wiser or better, than it proves him taller or stronger, than him who has it not. That cannot be a fit criterion for the exercise of any right, the possession of which does not indicate the existence, nor the want of it the absence, of any essential qualification.

But this criterion, it is strenuously insisted, though not perfect, is yet the best human wisdom can devise. It affords the strongest, if not the only evidence of the requisite qualifications; more particularly of what are absolutely essential, permanent coinmon interest with, and attachment to, the community." Those who cannot furnish this evidence, are therefore deservedly excluded.

Your memorialists do not design to institute a comparison; they fear none that can be fairly made between the privileged and the pros ribed classes. They may be permitted, however, without disrespect, to remark, that of the latter, not a few possess land: many, though not proprietors, are yet cultivators of the soil: others are engaged in avocations of a different nature, often as useful, pre-supposing no less integrity, requiring as much intelligence, and as fixed a residence, as agricultural pursuits. Virtue, intelligence. are not among the products of the soil. Attachment to property, often a sordid sentiment, is not to be confounded with the sacred fiane of patriotism. The love of country, like that of parents and off-pring, is engrafted in our nature. It exists in all climates, among all classes, under every possible form of Government. Riches oftener impair it than poverty. Who has it not is a monster.

Your mentorialists feel the difficulty of undertaking calmly to repel charges and insinuations involving in infamy themselves, and so large a portion of their fellowcitizens. To be deprived of their rightful.equality, and to hear as an apology that they are too ignorant and vicious to enjoy it, is no ordinary trial of patience. Yet they will suppress the indignant emotions these sweeping denunciations are well calculated to excite. The freeholders themselves know them to be unfounded: Why, else, are arms place in the hands of a body of disaffected citizens, so ignorant, so depraved, and so numerous ? In the hour of danger, they have drawn no invidious distinctions between the sons of Virginia. The muster rolls have undergone no scrutiny, no com

parison with the land books, with a view to expunge those who have been struck from the ranks of freemen. If the landless citizens have been ignominiously driven from the polls, in time of peace, they have at least been generously summoned, in war, to the battle-field. Nor have they disobeyed the summons, or, less profusely than others, poured out their blood in the defence of that country which is asked to disown them. Will it be said they owe allegiance to the Government that gives them protection? Be it so and if they acknowledge the obligation; if privileges are really extended to them in defence of which they may reasonably be required to shed their blood, have they not motives, irresistible motives, of attachment to the community? Have they not an interest, a deep interest, in perpetuating the blessings they enjoy, and a right, consequently, to guard those blessings, not from foreign aggression merely, but from domestic encroachment?

But, it is said, yield them this right, and they will abuse it: property, that is, landed property, will be rendered insecure, or at least overburthened, by those who possess it not. The freeholders, on the contrary, can pass no law to the injury of any other class, which will not more injuriously affect themselves. The alarm is sounded too, of danger from large manufacturing institutions, where one corrupt individual may sway the corrupt votes of thousands. It were a vain task to attempt to meet all the flimsy pretexts urged, to allay all the apprehensions felt or feigned by the enemies of a just and liberal policy. The danger of abuse is a dangerous plea. Like necessity, the detested plea of the tyrant, or the still more detestible plea of the Jesuit, expedi ency; it serves as an ever-ready apology for all oppression. If we are sincerely republican, we must give our confidence to the priciples we profess. We have been taught by our fathers, that all power is vested in, and derived from, the people; not the freeholders: that the majority of the community, in whom abides the physical force, have also the political right of creating and remoulding at will, their civil institutions. Nor can this right be any where more safely deposited. The generality of mankind, doubtles, desire to become owners of property: left free to reap the fruit of their labours, they will seek to acquire it honestly. It can never be their interest to overburthen, or render precarious, what they themselves desire to enjoy in peace. But should they ever prove as base as the argument supposes, force alone; arms, not votes, could effect their designs; and when that shall be attempted, what virtue is there in Constitutional restrictions, in mere wax and paper, to withstand it? To deny to the great body of the people all share in the Government; on suspicion that they may deprive others of their property, to rob them, in advance of their rights; to look to a privileged order as the fountain and depository of all power; is to depart from the fundamental maxims, to destroy the chief beauty, the characteristic feature, indeed, of Republican Govern ment. Nor is the danger of abuse thereby diminished, but greatly augmented. No community can exist, no representative body be formed, in which some one division of persons or section of country, or some two or more combined, may not preponderate and oppress the rest. The east may be more powerful than the west, the lowlanders than the highlanders, the agricultural than the commercial or manufacturing classes. To give all power, or an undue share, to one, is obviously not to remedy but to ensure the evil. Its safest check, its best corrective, is found in a general admis sion of all upon a footing of equality. So intimately are the interests of each class in society blended and interwoven, so indispensible is justice to all, that oppression in that case becomes less probable from any one, however powerful. Nor is this mere speculation. In our ecclesiastical polity it has been reduced to practice; and the most opposed in doctrine, the most bitter in controversy, have forgotten their angry conflicts for power, and now mingle in harmony.

The example of almost every other State in the Union, in which the patrician pretensions of the landholder hive, since their foundation, been unknown or despised, in many of which, too, manufacturing institutions exist on an extensive scale, ought alone to dispel these visionary fears of danger from the people. Indeed, all history demonstrates that the many have oftener been the victims than the oppressors. Cunning has proved an over-match for strength. The few have but too well succeeded in convincing them of their incapacity to manage their own affairs; and having persuaded them, for their own good, to submit to the curb, have generously taken the reins, and naturally enough converted them into beasts of burthen.

As to the danger from large manufacturing establishments in Virginia, when is their disastrous influence to be experienced? Is it not apparent that such establishments must, for an indefinite period, be at the mercy of those who affect to dread them, and may be shackled or suppressed, as fear or fancy may dictate? For how many centuries must the defranchised citizens be content to relinquish their rights, because, in some remote age of the world, a distant posterity, similarly circumstanced, may be powerful enough, and base enough withal, to trample upon the rights of others?

But justice is not to be expected, if self-aggrandizement is to be assumed as the sole ruling principle of men in power, then, your memorialists conceive, the interests of the many deserve at least as much to be guarded as those of the few. Conceding

the truth of the proposition assumed, what security, they would enquire, is there against the injustice of the freeholders? How is the assertion made good, that they can pass no law affecting the rights of others without more injuriously affecting their own? They cannot do this, it is said, because they possess, in common with other citizens, all personal rights, and, in addition, the rights pertaining to their peculiar property. And if this be a satisfactory reason, then one land-holder in each county or district would suffice to elect the representative body; or, the impossibility of injuring others being shewn, a single land-holder in the Commonwealth might still more conveniently exercise the sovereign power. But, is not the proposition obvíously false? What is there to prevent their imposing upon others undue burthens, and conferring on themselves unjust exemptions? Supplying the public exigencies by a capitation or other tax exclusively or oppressively operating on the other portions of the community? Exacting from the latter, in common with slaves, menial services? Placing around their own persons and property more efficient guards? Providing for their own injuries speedier remedies? Denying to the children of all other classes admission to the public seminaries of learning? Interdicting to all but their own order, indeed, the power to elect, and the right to be elected, are most intimately if not inséparably united; all offices of honor or emolument, civil or military? Why can they not do all this, and more? Where is the impossibility? It would be unjust: admirable logic! Injustice can be predicated only of non-freeholders.

Still it is said, the non-freeholders have no just cause of complaint. A freehold is easily acquired. The right of suffrage, moreover, is not a natural right. Society may grant, modify, or withhold it, as expediency may require. Indeed all agree that certain regulations are proper: those, for example, relating to age, sex, and citizenship. At best, it is an idle contest for an abstract right whose loss is attended with no practical evil.

If a freehold be, as supposed, so easily acquired, it would seem highly impolitic, to say no more, to insist on retaining an odious regulation, calculated to produce no other effect than to excite discontent. But the fact is not so. The thousands expelled from the polls too well attest the severity of its operation. It is by no means easy or convenient for persons whom fortune or inclination have engaged in other than agricultural pursuits, to withdraw from those pursuits, or from the support of their families, the amount requisite for the purchase of a freehold. To compel them to do this, to vest that sum in unproductive property, is to subject them, over and above the original cost, the assessments upon it, and the probable loss by deterioration, to an annual tax, equivalent to the profits they might have derived from the capital thus unprofitably expended. What would be thought of a tax imposed, or penalty inflicted, upon all voters, for exercising what should be the unbought privilege of every citizen? How much more odious is the law that imposes this tax, or rather, it may be said, inflicts this penalty, on one portion of the community, probably the larger and least able to encounter it, and exempts the other?

The right of suffrage, however, it seems, is not a natural right. If by natural, is meant what is just and reasonable, then, nothing is more reasonable than that those whose purses contribute to maintain, whose lives are pledged to defend the country, should participate in all the privileges of citizenship. But say it is not a natural right. Whence did the freeholders derive it? How become its exclusive possessors ? Will they arrogantly tell us they own the country, because they hold the land? The right by which they hold their land is not itself a natural right, and by consequence, nothing claimed as incidental to it. Whence then did they derive this privilege? From grant or conquest? Not from the latter. No war has ever been waged to assert it. If from the former, by whom was it conferred? They cannot, if they would, recur to the Royal Instructions of that English monarh, of infamous memory, who enjoined it upon the Governor of the then Colony of Virginia, to take care that the members of the Assembly be elected only by the freeholders, as being more agreeable to the custome of England:" he might have added more congenial also with monarchical institutions. If Colonial regulations might properly be looked to, then the right, not of freeholders merely, but of freemen, to vote, may be traced to a more distant antiquity, and a less polluted source. But, by our ever-glorious revolution, the Government whence these regulations emanated. was annulled, and with it all the political privileges it had conferred, swept away. Will they rely on the Constitutional provision? That was the act of men delegated by themselves. They exercised the very right in question in appointing the body from whom they profess to derive it, and indeed gave to that body all the power it possessed. What is this but to say they generously conferred the privilege upon themselves? Perhaps they may rely on length of time to forestal enquiry. We acknowledge no act of limitations against the oppressed. Or will they disdain to shew any title; and, clinging to power, rest on force, the last argument of Kings, as its source and its defence? This were, doubtless, the more politic course.

Let us concede that the right of suffrage is a social right; that it must of necessity be regulated by society. Still the question recurs, is the existing limitation proper? For obvious reasons, by almost universal consent, women and children, aliens and slaves, are excluded. It were useless to discuss the propriety of a rule that scarcely admits of diversity of opinion. What is concurred in by those who constitute the society, the body politic, must be taken to be right. But the exclusion of these classes for reasons peculiarly applicable to them, is no argument for excluding others to whom no one of those reasons applies.

It is said to be expedient, however, to exclude non-freeholders also. Who shall judge of this expediency? The society: and does that embrace the proprietors of certain portions of land only? Expedient, for whom? for the freeholders. A harsh appellation would he deserve, who, on the plea of expediency, should take from another his property: what, then, should be said of him who, on that plea, takes from another his rights, upon which the security, not of his property only, but of his life and liberty depends:

But the non-freeholders are condemned for pursuing an abstract right, whose privation occasions no practical injury.

Your memorialists do not, perhaps, sufficiently comprehend the precise import of this language, so often used. The enjoyment of all other rights, whether of person or property, they will not deny, ay be as perfect among those deprived of the privilege of voting, as among those possessing it. It may be as great under a despotism, as under any other form of Government. But they alone deserve to be called free, or have a guarantee for their rights, who participate in the formation of their political institutions, and in the control of those who make and adininister the laws. To such as may be disposed to surrender this, or any other immunity, to the keeping of others, no practical mischief may ensue from its abandonment; or if any, none that will not be justly merited. Not so with him who feels as a freeman should; who would think for himself and speak what he thinks; who would not commit his conscience or his liberty to the uncontrolled direction of others. To him the privation of right, of that especially, which is the only safeguard of freedom, is practically wrong. So thought the fathers of the republic. It was not the oppressive weight of the taxes imposed by England on America: it was the assertion of a right to impose any burthens whatever upon those who were not represented; to bind by laws those who had no share, personal or delegated, in their enactment, that roused this continent to arms. Have the principles and feelings that then prevailed, perished with the conflict to which they gave birth? If not, are they not now grossly outraged? The question is submitted to your candor and justice.

Never can your memorialists agree that pecuniary burthens or personal violence are the sole injuries of which men my dare to complain. It may be that the freeholders have shewn no disposition greatly to abuse the power they have assumed. Theymay have borne themselves with exemplary moderation. But their unrepresented brethren cannot submit to a degrading regulation which takes from them, on the supposition of mental inferiority or moral depravity, all share in the Government under which they live. They cannot yield to pretensions of political superiority founded on the possession of a bit of land, of whatever dimensions. They cannot acquiesce in political bondage, because those who affect to sway over them the rod of empire, treat them leniently. The privilege which they claim, they respectfully insist, is theirs as of right; and they are under no obligation to assign any reason whatever for claiming it, but that it is their own.

Let the picture be for a moment reversed. Let it be imagined that the non-freeholders, possessing the physical superiority which alone can cause their political influence to be dreaded, could, at some future day, after the manner of the freeholders, take the Governinent into their own hands, and deal out to the latter the same measure of justice they have received at their hands. It is needless to enquire into the equity of such a proceeding; but would they not find for it in the example set them at least a plausible exeuse, and to the freeholders' remonstrance retort the freeholders' argument? That argument your memorialists will not now recapitulate; they leave it to others to make the application.

Your memorialists have thought it due to the magnitude of the question, to examine at some length the grounds on which their political proscription is usually defended. If they have occasionally been betrayed into warmth of expression, the transcendant importance of the franchise they claim, and the nature of the objections they have been compelled to meet, will pled their apology. Deep would be their humiliation in now addressing you, delegated as you have been by those who hold them in political subjection, did they not but too well remember, it is their brethren to whom they impute their wrongs, and from whom they solicit reparation. Never, indeed, can they cease to protest against the measures which have made you, not the representatives of the people, but the organ of a privileged order. Still they approach you as the guardians of the public weal, however so constituted; as dispensers of the

public justice; as an assemblage of distinguished citizens wielding the power, however irregularly conferred, of new-modelling the fundamental institutions of the State. They bow with respectful deference to the virtues and talents which have raised you to the eminent station you now occupy. They appeal, through you, to the justice of their country, and confidently trust, under your auspices, to assume that equal rank in the community, to which they conceive theinselves justly entitled, and which, until they shall indeed be unworthy to enjoy it, they can never willingly re

nounce.

In behalf of the meeting,

Teste,

JOHN B. RICHARDSON, Secretary.

WALTER D. BLAIR, Chairman.

Mr. Marshall said that, however gentlemen might differ in opinion on the question discussed in the memorial, he was sure they must all feel that the subject was one of the deepest interest, and well entitled to the most serious attention of this body. He therefore moved its reference to the Committee on the Legislative Department of Government.

The motion was agreed to, and the memorial referred accordingly.

Mr. Mercer then presented a memorial, which, he said, came from a highly res pectable body of citizens in Fairfax county. Its purport and tenor were very si milar to that which had just been read; and he moved its reference to the same Committee..

The motion was agreed to, and the reading of the memorial having been dispensed with, it was referred to the Legislative Committee.

On motion of Mr. M'Coy, the House then adjourned, to meet to-morrow at one o'clock.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1829.

The Convention met at one o'clock, and its sitting was opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Taylor, of the Baptist Church.

No business presenting itself,

Mr. M'Coy moved an adjournment, but withdrew his motion in favor of Mr. Doddridge, who moved a recess of the House till four o'clock, hoping that the First Auditor might have had time to prepare and lay before the House the documents which had been ordered by the Convention.

The President then laid before the House the following letter from the Auditor:

AUDITOR'S OFfice, }
October 13, 1829. S

SIR-In compliance with one of the resolutions adopted by the Convention on the 10th inst. I have the honor to transmit a statement of the number of persons in each county, and corporate town, within this Commonwealth, charged with State tax on moveable property, for the year 1823. The documents called for by the other resolutions will be furnished as soon as they can be prepared.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

With great respect and consideration,
Your obedient servant,

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JAMES E. HEATH, Auditor of Public Accounts.

Mr. Doddridge moved to lay the communication on the table and print it, and that the Auditor should deliver the residue when prepared to the public printer.

The motion was agreed to.

Mr. Johnson, with a view to give the Committees more time, moved that when the House adjourned, it adjourn to meet at two instead of one o'clock, which being agreed to, on motion of Mr. Doddridge, the Convention adjourned.

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