Colonel Mason, a leading and distinguished member of the Convention that formed the Constitution, from Virginia, when the provision for prohibiting the importation of slaves was under consideration, said:-- "The present question concerns not the importing States alone, but the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the emigration of whites who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the right to import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be properly given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery." THE VOICE OF MCDOWELL. In 1832, Gov. McDowell used this language in the Virginia Legislature:-- "Who that looks to this unhappy bondage of an unhappy people, in the midst of our society, and thinks of its incidents or issues, but weeps over it as a curse as great upon him who inflicts as upon him who suffers it? Sir, you may place the slave where you please--you may dry up, to your uttermost, the fountains of his feelings, the springs of his thought--you may close upon his mind every avenue of knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial night--you may yoke him to your labors, as the ox, which liveth only to work and worketh only to live--you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being--you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality--it is the etherial part of his nature which oppression cannot rend. It is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be extinguished by the hand of man." THE VOICE OF IREDELL. In the debates of the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Iredell, afterwards a Judge of the United States Supreme Court, said:-- "When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every friend of human nature." THE VOICE OF PINKNEY. William Pinkney, of Maryland, in the House of Delegates in that State, in 1789, made several powerful arguments in favor of the abolition of slavery. Here follows a brief extract from one of his speeches:--