"Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your majesty to _remove all those restraints_ on your majesty's governors of this colony, _which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce_." Journals of the House of Burgesses, page 131.
This petition produced no effect, as appears from the first clause of our CONSTITUTION, where among other acts of misrule, "the inhuman use of the royal negative" in refusing us permission to exclude slaves from among us by law, is enumerated, among the reasons for _separating from Great Britain_.]
In the course of this enquiry it is easy to trace the desire of the legislature to put a stop to the further importation of slaves; and had not this desire been uniformly opposed on the part of the crown, it is highly probable that event would have taken effect at a much earlier period than it did. A duty of five per cent. to be paid by the buyers, at first, with difficulty obtained the royal assent. Requisitions from the crown for aids, on particular occasions, afforded a pretext from time to time for increasing the duty from five, to ten, and finally to twenty per cent. with which the _buyer_ was uniformly made chargeable. The wishes of the people of this colony, were not sufficient to counterbalance the interest of the English merchants, trading to Africa, and it is probable, that however disposed to put a stop to so infamous a traffic by law, we should never have been able to effect it, so long as we might have continued dependant on the British government: an object sufficient of itself to justify a revolution. That the legislature of Virginia were _sincerely_ disposed to put a stop to it, cannot be doubted; for even during the tumult and confusion of the revolution, we have seen that they availed themselves of the earliest opportunity, to crush for ever so pernicious and infamous a commerce, by an act passed in October 1778, the penalties of which, though apparently lessened by the act of 1792, are still equal to the value of the slave; being two hundred dollars upon the importer, and one hundred dollars upon every person buying or selling an imported slave.
A system uniformly persisted in for nearly a whole century, and finally carried into effect, so soon as the legislature was unrestrained by "the inhuman exercise of the royal negative," evinces the sincerity of that disposition which the legislature had shewn during so long a period, to put a check to the growing evil. From the time that the duty was raised above five per cent. it is probable that the importation of slaves into this colony decreased. The demand for them in the more southern colonies probably contributed also to lessen the numbers imported into this: for some years immediately preceding the revolution, the importation of slaves into Virginia might almost be considered as at an end; and probably would have been entirely so, if the ingenuity of the merchant had not found out the means of evading the heavy duty, by pretended sales, at which the slaves were bought in by some friend, at a quarter of their real value.