While these devotees of freedom were harassing the enemy they were engaged in operations much more drastic. The laws for abolition, respecting as they did the sacredness of right in property, had not abrogated existing titles to slaves.[253] This the abolitionists denounced as theft, and resolved to get justice by cutting out slavery root and branch.[254] First they attacked it in the courts. The declaration of rights in the constitution of 1790 declared that all men were born equally free and independent, and had an inherent right to enjoy and defend life and liberty.[255] In 1792 a committee of the House refused the petition of some slaveholders on the ground that slavery was not only unlawful in itself, but also repugnant to the constitution.[256] This point was seized upon by the abolitionists, who resolved to test it before the law. Accordingly they arranged the famous case of Negro Flora _v._ Joseph Graisberry, and brought it up to the Supreme Court of the state in 1795. It was not settled there, but went up to what was at that time the ultimate judicial authority in Pennsylvania, the High Court of Errors and Appeals. Some seven years after the question had first been brought to law this august tribunal decided after lengthy and able argument that negro slavery did legally exist before the adoption of the constitution of 1790, and that it had not been abolished thereby.[257] Failing to destroy slavery in the courts the abolitionists strove to demolish it by legal enactment. For this purpose they began a campaign that lasted for two generations. In 1793 the Friends petitioned the Senate for the complete abolition of slavery, and in 1799 they sent a memorial showing their deep concern at the keeping of slaves. In the following year citizens of Philadelphia prayed for abolition, and a few days later the free blacks of the city petitioned that their brethren in bondage be set free, suggesting that a tax be laid upon themselves to help compensate the masters dispossessed. The demand for freedom was supported in other quarters of the state, and undoubtedly a strong feeling was aroused. The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery began the practice, which it kept up for so many years, of regularly memorializing the legislature. Later on some of the leading men of the state took up the cause, and once the governor in his message referred to the galling yoke of slavery and its stain upon the commonwealth.[258]