It would not be amiss to notice what was transpiring in England on this subject at the time the Federal Constitution was being adopted. Clarkson, Wilberforce and others were agitating the question of the slave trade at this time, and the utmost that the younger Pitt, then at the head of the government, would venture to do, was to procure the passage of an act of Parliament, for the mitigation of the atrocities of the "Middle Passage" by which it was provided that slave ships should not carry beyond a certain number of slaves in proportion to the tonnage. Even this bill met with strong opposition and among others, from Lord Chancellor Thurlow "the Ruler of the King's conscience." In opposing the bill he said: "It appears that the French have offered premiums to encourage the African trade, and that they have succeeded. The natural presumption therefore is, that we ought to do the same." He further said: "One witness has come to your Lordship's bar with a face of woe, his eyes full of tears and his countenance fraught with horror, and said 'My Lords, I am ruined if you pass this bill! I have risked £30,000 on the trade of this year! It is all I have been able to gain by my industry, and if I lose it, I must go to the hospital! I desire of you to think of such things, my Lords, in your humane frenzy and to show some humanity to the whites as well as the negroes.'" The bill, however, passed with amendments to grant compensation for losses, and this was as far as English statesmanship would venture to go at that time. Was it to be expected that American statesmen should be better, wiser and more philanthropic than English statesmen? Shortly after the close of the war, Virginia had ceded to the Confederation for the common benefit of all the states, the territory northwest of the Ohio river; and Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut had ceded their rights. (?) The claim of Connecticut skipped over Pennsylvania and that state made a very good bargain for herself by securing the title to the lands in what has since been known as the "Western Reserve," though no officer or soldier or, so far as is known, citizen of hers, had even been in the northwestern territory. Virginia's original charter, the oldest of all covered the country, but independent of that, it had been conquered from the Indians and British by the forces of Virginia under George Rogers Clarke. It was a magnificent empire which Virginia thus surrendered for the common good and for the cause of the Union of the states, and the only compensation she asked was, that the land grants pledged her own soldiers should be ratified.