Thus Virginia has the honour of being the first Commonwealth on earth to declare against the African slave trade, and to make it a penal offence. Her action antedates by thirty years the much bepraised legislation of the British Parliament, and by ten years the earliest movement of Massachusetts on the subject; while it has the immense advantage, besides, of consistency; because she was never stained by any complicity in the trade, and she exercised her earliest untrammelled power to stay its evils effectually in her dominions. Thus, almost before the Clarksons and Wilberforces were born, had Virginia done that very work for which her slanderers now pretend so much to laud those philanthropists. All that these reformers needed to do was to bid the British Government go and imitate the example which Virginia was the first to set, among the kingdoms of the world. It is true that the first Congress of 1774, at Philadelphia, had adopted a resolution that the slave trade ought to cease; but this body had no powers, either federal or national; it was a mere committee; and its inspiration upon this subject, as upon most others, came from Virginia. In 1788, Massachusetts passed an act forbidding her citizens from importing, transporting, buying, or selling any of the inhabitants of Africa as slaves, on a penalty of fifty pounds for each person so misused, and of two hundred pounds for every vessel employed in this traffick. Vessels which had already sailed were exempted from all penalty for their present voyages.[36] It is manifest from the character of the penalties, that this law was not passed to be enforced; and the evidence soon to be adduced will show, beyond all doubt, that this is true. The act was one of those cheap tributes which Pharisaic avarice knows so well how to pay to appearances. Connecticut passed a very similar law the same year, prohibiting her citizens to engage in the slave trade, and voiding the policies of insurance on slave ships. The slave trade of New England continued in increasing activity for twenty years longer. [Footnote 36: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 227.]