At this convention two memorials were adopted, one to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and the other to Congress, asking for suitable laws to suppress the slave trade. The petition to Congress was referred to a committee, which made a report recommending the passage of a law against the fitting out of any ship or vessel in any port of the United States, or by foreigners, for the purpose of procuring from any part of the coast of Africa the inhabitants of the said country, to be transshipped into any foreign ports or places of the world to be sold or disposed of as slaves. The law was finally passed on March 22, 1794, and vessels were thereafter liable to heavy fine and forfeiture, and the freedom of the slaves on board. Thus after the taunt of the early German settlers, the Quakers cleared their own skirts and then led in the movement which abolished slaves from Pennsylvania and were the first to lay this great question before Congress. ---------- First Magazine in America Published in Philadelphia, February 13, 1741 There has been recent controversy, especially among New York newspapers, regarding the oldest magazine in America, one such newspaper concluding that the oldest such publication was Oliver Oldschool’s “Portfolio,” published by Bradford and Inskeep, of Philadelphia, and Inskeep and Bradford, in New York, 1809–1810. That is not the fact and Pennsylvania cannot be denied the honor of being the home of the earliest magazine published on this continent. On November 6, 1740, Andrew Bradford’s “Mercury,” published in Philadelphia, contained a two page editorial which must surely have caused some sensation, heralding as it did a genuine innovation. “’Tis not in mortals to command success,” and if the innovator in this case failed, he was at least the first to make the attempt, not alone in Philadelphia, but throughout America. The editorial plunged headlong into the business at hand as follows: “The PLAN of an intended MAGAZINE.” “The Success and Approbation which the Magazines, published in Great Britain, have met with for many years past among all Ranks and Degrees of People, Encouraged us to Attempt a Work of the like Nature in America. But the Plan on which we intend to proceed, being in many respects different from the British Models, it therefore becomes necessary, in the first Place, to lay before the Reader a general Prospect of the present Design. “It is proposed to publish Monthly, ‘An Account of the Publick Affairs transacted in His Majesty’s Colonies, as well on the Continent of America, as well as in the West India Islands,’ and at the end of each session, ‘an Extract of the Laws therein passed, with the Reasons on which they were founded, the Grievances intended to be Remedied by them, and the Benefits expected from them.”