a year_, shall be free. By this means the difficulty of proving the right to freedom will be not a little augmented: for the fact of the first importation, where the right to freedom immediately ensued, might have been always proved without difficulty; but where a slave is subject to removal from place to place, and his right to freedom is postponed for so long a time as a whole year, or perhaps several years, the provisions in favour of liberty may be too easily evaded. The same act declares that no persons shall thenceforth be slaves in this commonwealth, except such as were so on the first day of that session (Oct. 17th, 1785), and the descendants of the females of them. This act was re-enacted in the revisal made in 1792 [See acts of 1794, c. 103.]. In 1793 an additional act passed, authorising and requiring any justice of the peace having notice of the importation of any slaves, directly or indirectly, from any part of Africa or the West Indies, to cause such slave to be immediately apprehended and transported out of the commonwealth [Edit. of 1794. c. 164.]. Such is the rise, progress, and present foundation of slavery in Virginia, so far as I have been able to trace it. The present number of slaves in Virginia, is immense, as appears by the census taken in 1791, amounting to no less than 292,427 souls: nearly two-fifths of the whole population of the commonwealth.[13] We may console ourselves with the hope that this proportion will not increase, the further importation of slaves being prohibited, whilst the free migrations of white people hither is encouraged. But this hope affords no other relief from the evil of slavery, than a diminution of those apprehensions which are naturally excited by the detention of so large a number of oppressed individuals among us, and the possibility that they may one day be roused to an attempt to shake off their chains. [Footnote 11: Among the Israelites, according to the Mosaical law, "If a man smote his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should surely be punished--notwithstanding if he continue a day or two, he should not be punished [Exod. c. 21]:" for, saith the text, he is _his money_. Our legislators appear to have adopted the reason of the latter clause, without the humanity of the former part of the law.]