5804. NEGROES, Colonization.—
The bill
reported by the revisors [355]
of the whole [Virginia]
code does not itself contain the proposition
to emancipate all slaves born after the
passing the act; 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 to be
brought up, at the public expense, to tillage,
arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, 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 of 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 shall
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
them to migrate hither, proper encouragements
were to be proposed.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 380.
Ford ed., iii, 243.
(1782)
