Soon again he laid down his great command, contenting himself with his farm and his duties as deputy. But his heart went wherever Liberty was struggling,--now with the Pole, and then with the African slave. To the rights of the latter he had borne true and unfaltering loyalty at all times and in all places, beginning with that memorable appeal to Washington on the consummation of Independence, and repeated in two triumphal visits to our country,--also in public debate, in conversation, in correspondence,--in the interesting experiment at Cayenne, and, more affecting still, in the dungeon of arbitrary power. Every slave, according to him, has a natural right to immediate emancipation, whether by concession or force; and this principle he declared above all question.[123] He knew no distinction of color, as he continually showed. His first letter to President John Quincy Adams, after return from his American triumph, mentions that he had dined in the company of two commissioners from Hayti, one a mulatto and the other entirely black, and he was “well pleased with their good sense and good manners.”[124] Tenderly he touched this great question in our own country; but his constancy in this respect shows how it haunted and perplexed him, like a Sphinx with a perpetual riddle. He could not understand how men who had fought for their own liberty could deny liberty to others. But he did not despair, although, on one occasion, when this inconsistency glared upon him, his impatient philanthropy exclaimed, that he would never have drawn his sword for America, had he known that it was to found a government sanctioning Slavery. * * * * * The time had come for this great life to close. A sudden illness, contracted in following on foot the funeral of a colleague, confined him to his bed. As his case became critical, the Chamber of Deputies, by solemn vote,--perhaps without example in parliamentary history,--directed their President to inquire of George Washington Lafayette after the health of his illustrious parent. On the following day, May 20, 1834, he died, aged seventy-seven. The ruling passion of his life was strong to the close. As at the beginning, so at the end, he was all for Human Rights. This ruled his mind and filled his heart. His last public speech was in behalf of political refugees seeking shelter in France from the proscription of arbitrary power.[125] The last lines traced by his hand, even after the beginning of his fatal illness, attest his joy at that great act of Emancipation by which England had just given freedom to her slaves. “Nobly,” he wrote, “has the public treasure been employed!”[126] And these last words still resound in our ears, speaking from his tomb. * * * * *