In Virginia, in 1821, it was suggested through the columns of the Richmond Enquirer, that an act should be passed declaring that all involuntary servitude should cease to exist in that State from and after the year 2000; thus, without reducing for one or two generations the value of slave property one cent, affording ample time and opportunity to dispose of or exchange that dead property for a more useful and profitable kind. In 1825, Hon. Mr. King, of New York, introduced into the Senate of the United States the annexed resolution:-- "That as soon as the portion of the existing funded debt of the United States, for the payment of which the public land is pledged, shall have been paid off, thenceforth the whole of the public lands of the United States, with the net proceeds of all future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund which is hereby appropriated to aid the emancipation of such slaves and the removal of any free persons of color in any of the said States, as by the laws of the several States respectively may be allowed to be emancipated, or to be removed to any territory or country without the limits of the United States of America." This resolution, however, was not called up by the mover, or otherwise acted upon. Still another plan was to raise money by contribution throughout the Union and elsewhere, and buy all the slaves at $250 each. The value of four million negroes at $500 each, their average market value, would be $2,000,000,000. It is unnecessary to say that none of these propositions were ever adopted in practice. In fact, while abolitionism has pretended to feel for the supposed sufferings of slaves, it has never felt much in its pockets to aid them. At such a period--when the rampant spirit of reform was attacking every imaginary evil of the times--it is not a matter of wonder that northern abolitionists, yielding to their fanatical prejudices and to the British intrigue that was urging them onward, commenced that acrimonious agitation of the question which has since been its leading characteristic. The negro was pronounced "a man and a brother," and that was the beginning and end of the argument. Tracts, speeches, pamphlets and essays were scattered, "without money and without price." The pulpit vied with the press, and every imaginable form of argument was used to hold up slavery as the most horrible of all atrocities, and the "sum of all villanies." Newspapers began to be an acknowledged element in the land, and, falling in the train of the young revolution, or rather growing out of it, wielded immense power among the masses. Among those then devoted to the subject of reform were the National Philanthropist, commenced in 1826; the Investigator, published at Providence, R. I., by William Goodell, in 1827; the Liberator, by William Lloyd Garrison, at Boston, in 1831, and the Emancipator, in New York.