and it was vetoed. In Jefferson's first-draft of the Declaration of Independence, this action of the king was made the occasion of a fierce denunciation of slavery, but in deference to the prejudices of South Carolina and Georgia the clause was struck out by Congress. When George III. and his vetoes had been eliminated from the case, it became possible for the states to legislate freely on the subject. In 1776 negro slaves were held in all the thirteen states, but in all except South Carolina and Georgia there was a strong sentiment in favour of emancipation. In North Carolina, which contained a large Quaker population, and in which estates were small and were often cultivated by free labour, the pro-slavery feeling was never so strong as in the southernmost states. In Virginia all the foremost statesmen--Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Randolph, Henry, Madison, and Mason--were opposed to the continuance of slavery; and their opinions were shared by many of the largest planters. For tobacco-culture slavery did not seem so indispensable as for the raising of rice and indigo; and in Virginia the negroes, half-civilized by kindly treatment, were not regarded with horror by their masters, like the ill-treated and ferocious blacks of South Carolina and Georgia. After 1808 the policy and the sentiments of Virginia underwent a marked change. The invention of the cotton-gin, taken in connection with the sudden and prodigious development of manufactures in England, greatly stimulated the growth of cotton in the ever-enlarging area of the Gulf states, and created an immense demand for slave-labour, just at the time when the importation of negroes from Africa came to an end. The breeding of slaves, to be sold to the planters of the Gulf states, then became such a profitable occupation in Virginia as entirely to change the popular feeling about slavery. But until 1808 Virginia sympathized with the anti-slavery sentiment which was growing up in the northern states; and the same was true of Maryland. Emancipation was, however, much more easy to accomplish in the north, because the number of slaves was small, and economic circumstances distinctly favoured free labour. In the work of gradual emancipation the little state of Delaware led the way. In its new constitution of 1776 the further introduction of slaves was prohibited, all restraints upon emancipation having already been removed. In the assembly of Virginia in 1778 a bill prohibiting the further introduction of slaves was moved and carried by Thomas Jefferson, and the same measure was passed in Maryland in 1783, while both these states removed all restraints upon emancipation. North Carolina was not ready to go quite so far, but in 1786 she sought to discourage the slave-trade by putting a duty of £5 per head on all negroes thereafter imported. New Jersey followed the example of Maryland and Virginia. Pennsylvania went farther. In 1780 its assembly enacted that no more slaves should be