The status of the Negro, both slave and free, was intimately associated with this economic development of the far South. There is much to indicate that the entire South gradually underwent a profound change of attitude towards slavery in the three decades from 1800 to 1830. Slavery was generally looked upon as an evil by the southern leaders of the time of the constitutional convention and for two decades afterwards, perhaps. Mason of Virginia in the debates of 1787 stated that slavery discouraged the arts and manufactures, prevented immigration of whites, exercised a most pernicious effect upon manners, made every master a petty tyrant and would bring the judgment of heaven down upon the country. Baldwin, speaking for Georgia, said that "If left to herself, she may probably put an end to the evil[320]." Jefferson's expressions against slavery were many and pronounced[321], and there is reason for thinking that these ideas were shared by many even in the far South. An editorial in the _Milledgeville Journal_ of Georgia, January 1, 1817, has this remarkable language: "With such a hint from a distinguished philosopher (_i. e._, Jefferson), shall we not merit execration, if we fail to provide in time an adequate remedy for this great and growing evil, an evil which is always staring us in the face--which obtrudes so frequently upon us in spite of ourselves, the most gloomy and awful apprehension[322]." As late as 1826, when Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, asserted before the House that slavery was sanctioned by religion, John Randolph, of Virginia, himself a slaveholder, replied: "Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of that man from the North who rises here to defend slavery from principle[323]."