Thus, the emancipation legislation of the Northern States has been reviewed, and the assertions of the Hon. Mr. Stuart substantially sustained. That Northern emancipation was prompted by no consideration for the supposed rights of Africans, but by regard to their own interests, is evinced by many facts. Of these, perhaps the most general and striking is the persistent neglect of the welfare of their emancipated slaves; the refusal to give them equal civic rights, until they found a motive for doing so in malice against the South; and the shocking decadence, vice and misery to which a nominal liberty, according to the testimony of Northern writers, has consigned their wretched free blacks. Another proof is found in the current language of the men of the generation which effected the change. That language, as is well remembered by elderly persons still living, was usually such as this: that now that the population had filled up the country, the question of emancipation was simply one of choice between their own children and the negro--whether their sons should emigrate, or the negro be gotten rid of, as there was no longer room for both. Another conclusive proof is in the fact that while these States were getting rid of their own negroes, they were deliberately voting (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, in the Convention of 1787,) to prolong the introduction of slaves into the Carolinas nineteen years more. Still another evidence is found in the repugnance of those States to the influx of free blacks, and the stringent laws of some of them to prevent it. Thus, Massachusetts, in March, 1788, (eight years after the pretended extinction of human bondage,) passed a law ordering every black, mulatto or Indian who came into the State and remained two months to be publickly whipped; and this punishment was to be repeated "if he or she shall not depart _toties quoties_."[76] _This law remained in force until 1834!_ as is shown by its appearance in the Revised Laws of Massachusetts, 1823. It is also to be noted that the scheme of gradual emancipation, upon which the whole North acted, obviously recognizes the property of the master in his slave as legitimate in itself. It only touches it, (because private rights are here required to give place to publick interest,) in the case of those born after a certain day. The slavery of the others is left as perpetual and legal as ever. And even as to the later born, the right of the master receives a certain recognition, in that he is allowed twenty-five years' service as a partial compensation for the surrender of the remainder. [Footnote 76: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 229.]