He was immediately elected a member of the first legislature of Virginia convened under its new constitution, and was looked upon as one of the main bulwarks of her future safety. After taking his seat in that body, his first business was, to demolish the superstructure of the judicial code, that had been reared, either by, or under the supervision of the British parliament. Although sustained and aided by able and willing colleagues, the great work of revision fell most heavily upon him. The first bill he introduced was aimed at the slave trade, and prohibited the farther importation of negroes into Virginia. This act alone is a triumphant confutation of the accusation often reiterated against Mr. Jefferson, _that he was an advocate of slavery_. To its _principles_ he was always opposed, and submitted to it _practically_ only by entail. That he struck the first blow at the unhallowed trade of importing human beings for the purpose of consigning them to bondage, is a fact beyond dispute. That this was the first grand step towards a correction of the most cruel features of the _traffic_, will not be denied. To transfer those born in America, from one state to another, bears no comparison to the heart-rending barbarity of dragging the African from his native home. He next introduced and effected the passage of bills destroying entails, the rights of primogeniture, the church as established by the English law; and also various others, calculated to assimilate the entire system of jurisprudence in the state, to its new and republican form of government; amounting, in all, to one hundred and twenty-six, most of which were passed, and form the present much admired statutory code of Virginia.