The same comparison was also presented by the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania, in an Address, in 1787, to the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution. "Providence," it says, "seems to have ordained the sufferings of our American brethren, groaning in captivity at Algiers, to awaken us to a sentiment of the injustice and cruelty of which we are guilty towards the wretched Africans."[101] Shortly afterwards, it was again brought forward by Dr. Franklin, in an ingenious apologue, marked by his peculiar humor, simplicity, logic, and humanity. As President of the same Abolition Society, which had already addressed the Convention, he signed a memorial to the earliest Congress under the Constitution, praying it "to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men, who alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage; and to step to the _very verge_ of the power vested in them for _discouraging_ every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men." In the debates which ensued on the presentation of this memorial,--memorable not only for its intrinsic importance as a guide to the country, but as the final public act of one of the chief founders of our national institutions,--several attempts were made to justify slavery and the slave trade. The last and almost dying energies of Franklin were excited. In a remarkable document, written only twenty-four days before his death, and published in the journals of the time, he gave a parody of a speech actually delivered in the American Congress--transferring the scene to Algiers, and putting the American speech in the mouth of a corsair slave dealer, in the Divan at that place. All the arguments adduced in favor of negro slavery are applied by the Algerine orator with equal force to justify the plunder and enslavement of whites.[102] With this protest against a great wrong, Franklin died. [Footnote 101: Brissot's Travels, vol. i. letter 22.] [Footnote 102: Sparks's Franklin, vol. ii. p. 517.] Most certainly we shall be aided, at least in our appreciation of American slavery, when we know that it was likened, by characters like Wesley, Jay, and Franklin, to the abomination of slavery in Algiers. But whatever may have been the influence of this parallel on the condition of the black slaves, it did not check the rising sentiments of the people against White Slavery.