INTRODUCTION. 69 



the grains have shrunk. I should have been for a clause against the continuance 

 of domestic slavery." In 1788, the legislature passed an act which struck at the 

 foreign slave trade, but not at the existence of the institution of slavery itself. 

 This act declared "that if any person should sell, within this state, any negro or 

 other person, who had been imported or brought into the state after the first of 

 June, 1785, such seller should be deemed guilty of a public offence, and the 

 person so imported or sold should be reprieved." Having been elected to the 

 office of governor in 1795, John Jay diligently prosecuted his philanthropic pur- 

 pose of procuring the abolition of slavery. Unwilling to expose that measure to 

 the spirit of party, he did not recommend it in his first speech, but it was intro- 

 duced by one of his friends into the house of assembly. After a protracted 

 discussion, the bill was defeated, and a resolution was passed " that it would be 

 unjust to deprive any citizen of his property without a reasonable pecuniary 

 compensation to be rendered at the expense of the state." The effort was re- 

 newed in 1797, but was successfully resisted, and no vote was taken on the 

 merits of the question. John Jay had long since declared, " that were he a mem- 

 ber of the legislature, he would introduce a bill for the gradual abolition of 

 slavery, and would never desist from urging its passage until it became a law, or 

 he ceased to be a member." True to the principle thus avowed, he, in 1798, 

 caused a bill to be introduced for the fourth, and, happily, for the last time. It 

 was passed by majorities of ten in the senate and twenty-six in the assembly, and 

 may be justly regarded as the crowning event of John Jay's administration. 

 Slavery, however, still lingered, under some reservations contained in the law, 

 until in March, 1817, during the administration of Daniel D. Tompkins, the 

 annihilation of this form of bondage was effectually secured by an act emancipating 

 " every" negro, mulatto or mustee within the state, born before the fourth of July, 

 1799. The new constitution of the state adopted in 1821 took a retrogade step 

 in requiring of colored persons a property qualification of two hundred and fifty 

 dollars as a condition of suffrage, while white citizens were allowed to vote with- 

 out any such possessions. In 1840, with a view to the better protection of per- 



