Yet they seem to cherish the evil and to view with immovable prejudice & dislike every thing which may tend to diminish it.

He thus closes this eminently practical letter: "The removal of our colored population is, I think, a common object, by no means confined to the slave States, although they are more immediately interested in it.

The responsibility of the carrier should be measured by the law which is applicable to passengers, rather than by that which is applicable to the carriage of common goods....

It appears that he regretted the existence of slavery, feared the results of it, saw no way of getting rid of it, but hoped to lessen the evil by colonizing in Africa such free black people as were willing to go there.

He was far more concerned that the Union should be strengthened, and dissension in Virginia quieted, than he was over the problem of human bondage, of which he saw no solution.

No more essentially aristocratic scheme of government ever existed in America.

In theory, a more oligarchic system never was devised for the government of a free state; but in practice, it responded to the variations of public opinion with almost the precision of a thermometer.

While, therefore, this judicial-social-political plan worked well for the most part, the idea of it was offensive to liberal-minded men who believed in democracy as a principle.

He has to pass between the Government and the man whom that Government is prosecuting: between the most powerful individual in the community, and the poorest and most unpopular.

It is of the last importance, that in the exercise of these duties, he should observe the utmost fairness.

The Judicial Department comes home in its effects to every man's fireside: it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all.

Is it not, to the last degree important, that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience?

You do not allow a man to perform the duties of a juryman or a Judge, if he has one dollar of interest in the matter to be decided: and will you allow a Judge to give a decision when his office may depend upon it? when his decision may…

And will you make me believe that if the manner of his decision may affect the tenure of that office, the man himself will not be affected by that consideration?...

The whole good which may grow out of this Convention, be it what it may, will never compensate for the evil of changing the tenure of the Judicial office.

I am persuaded, there is at least as much danger that they will lay hold on such an individual, as that they will condemn a man to death for doing that which, when he committed it, was no crime.

Such an idea was never heard of in Virginia, as to remove a Judge from office." Suppose the courts at the mercy of the Legislature?

What would then be the condition of the court, should the Legislature prosecute a man, with an earnest wish to convict him?...

I have always thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and a sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent Judiciary.

The question constantly recurs--do you mean that the Judges shall be removable at the will of the Legislature?

Responsibility to what? to the will of the Legislature? can there be no responsibility, unless your Judges shall be removable at pleasure? will nothing short of this satisfy gentlemen?

Then, indeed, there is an end to independence.

The tenure during good behaviour, is a mere imposition on the public belief--a sound that is kept to the ear--and nothing else.

You seduce a lawyer from his practice, by which he is earning a comfortable independence, by promising him a certain support for life, unless he shall be guilty of misconduct in his office.

And after thus seducing him, when his independence is gone, and the means of supporting his family relinquished, you will suffer him to be displaced and turned loose on the world with the odious brand of sinecure-pensioner--privileged…