Gradual Emancipation

The following ís C. M. Clay's project for emancipatinghis countrymenin Kentucky - or rather their posterily - for it does not propose to do uny thing under 25 or 30 yenrs. It is a crude, impracticable, temporizing project: but the discussion of t wouid undoubtedly have been beneficia!, because it would have lead to the true remedy - Tmmediate Emancipation, on the Soil, without Compensaron. "In a convention, which is politically omnipotent, I would say that every female slave bom after a certain day and year should be free at the age of twentyone. This in the course of time, would graduallv, and at last, mnke our State truly free. I would farthersay that, after the expiration of thirty years, more or less, the State should provide a fund either f rom her own resources, or from her portion in the public lands, for the purchase of the existing generation of slaves, in order Ihat the white laboring portion of the community might as soon as possible be freed from the ruinous competi'ion of slave labor. The funds shall be applied after this manner: commissioners shall be appointed in each county, who shall on oath vahie all the slaves that shall be voluntarily presented to them for that purpose. To the o wners of the slaves shall be issued, by the proper authorities, scrip bea ring interest at the rate of six per cent. to theimount of the value of their slaves, and , o the redemption of said scrip, principal nnd interest. By this plan, the present habits of our people would not be suddenly broken in upon, white, at the same time, we believe that it would bring slavery to almost utter extinction in our State within the next thïrty years. With regard tothe free blacks, I would not go for forcible expulsión, but I would encourage,by all the pecuniary resources the State had to spare, a voluntary emigration to such countries and climates as nature seems particularly to have designed them. With regard to the political equality of the blacks wilh the whites, I should oppose in convention their admission to the right of sufTrnge. As minors, women, foreigners, denizens, and divers other classes of individuals are, in well-regulatcd governments, forbidden the elective franchise, so I see no good reason why the blacks, ontil they become able to exercise the right to vote with proper discretion, should be admitted to the right of sufirage. 'Sufficient for the day ís the evil thereof.' The time might come with succeeding generations when there would be no objection on the part of the whites, and none on the disqualification of the blacks, to their being admitted to the same nolitical platform; but let after generations act for themselves. The idea of amalgamation and paid equality is proven to be untrue and absurd. It may be said by some, what right would a convention have to libérate the unborn? They who ask equity, the lawyers say, themselves must do equity, and while the slaveholders have rights; they must remember that the blacks also have riglits, and surely in the compromise we have proposed between the slave and slaveholder, the slaveholder has the lion'sshare."