XII. No person, holding a slave as his property, shall be admitted a member of this Society; nevertheless, the Society may appoint persons of legal knowledge, owners of slaves, as honorary-counselors. XIII. When an alteration in the Constitution is thought necessary, it shall be proposed at a previous meeting, before it shall take place. All questions shall be decided, where there is a division, by a majority of votes. In those cases where the Society is equally divided, the presiding officer shall have a casting vote. OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY. _President_--PHILIP ROGERS. _Vice-President_--JAMES CAREY. _Secretary_--JOSEPH TOWNSEND. _Treasurer_--DAVID BROWN. _Counselors_--ZEBULON HOLLINGSWORTH, ARCHIBALD ROBINSON. _Honorary-Counselors_--SAMUEL CHASE, LUTHER MARTIN. _Electing-Committee_--JAMES OGLEBY, ISAAC GREIST, GEO. MATTHEWS, GEORGE PRESSTMAN, HENRY WILSON, JOHN BANKSON, ADAM FONERDEN, JAMES EICHELBERGER, WILLIAM HAWKINS, WILLIAM WILSON, THOMAS DICKSON, GER. HOPKINS. _Acting-Committee_--JOHN BROWN, ELISHA TYSON, JAMES M'CANNON, ELIAS ELLICOTT, WILLIAM TRIMBLE, GEORGE DENT. _September 8, 1789._ [22] Of the one hundred and eighty-nine incorporators of the Rhode Island Society, one hundred and seventeen were from Rhode Island, sixty-eight from Massachusetts, three from Connecticut, and one from Vermont. The Nation, Nov. 28, 1872. [23] St. George Tucker, an eminent jurist, and Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Virginia, January 24, 1795, addressed a letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, of Boston, inquiring into the condition of the negroes in Massachusetts, and the circumstances under which slavery had come to an end in that state. His object was to obtain facts which he could use in removing prejudice against general emancipation in Virginia. "The introduction of slavery into this country," he says, "is at this day considered among its greatest misfortunes. I have cherished a hope that we may, from the example of our sister State, learn what methods are most likely to succeed in removing the same evils from among ourselves. With this view, I have taken the liberty to enclose a few queries, which, if your leisure will permit you to answer, you will confer on me a favor which I shall always consider as an obligation." He propounded eleven queries, to which Dr. Belknap replied at length. The correspondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society's selections, iv, pp. 191-211. The next year Judge Tucker printed, at Philadelphia, his "Dissertation on Slavery, with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it in Virginia." Dr. Belknap's replies to Judge Tucker's inquiries have much historical interest. To the fifth query, "The mode by which slavery hath been abolished?" he says: "The general answer is, that slavery hath been abolished here by _public opinion_, which began to be established about thirty years ago. At the beginning of our controversy with Great Britain, several persons, who before had