On motion of Mr ROADMAN, the Convention again resolved itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr Cannon in the Chair, upon the existing Constitution and the various resolutions to them referred proposing amendments thereto; and after some time spent in the consideration thereof, the committee rose, reported progress, asked and obtained leave to sit again.

And then the Convention adjourned.

TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1834.

The Convention met according to adjournment, and was opened with prayer, by the Rev. Mr WELLER of the Episcopal Church.

On motion of Mr WHITE, the Convention again resolved itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr Cheatham in the Chair, upon the existing Constitution and the various resolutions to them referred proposing amendments thereto; and after some time spent in the consideration thereof, the committee rose, reported progress, asked and obtained leave to sit again.

The report of the select committee on privileges and elections, made on Thursday last, in relation to the contested election, between Adam R. Alexander, the sitting member from the county of Shelby, and Edward Ward, was taken up, considered, and concurred with.

On motion of Mr ALLEN, the report of the standing committee on privileges and elections, made on Monday, the 30th of June last, on the same subject, was taken up, and being read, Mr Allen moved a non-concurrence with so much thereof as declares the election void and proposes to refer it again to the voters of Shelby county; which motion prevailing,

Mr FOGG submitted the following in lieu; to wit:

"Resolved, That this Convention proceed to hear the testimony adduced by the parties."

Which resolution, with the consent of Mr Fogg,was laid on the table. Mr HUNTSMAN, at the request of Mr Fulton, moved a re-consideration of the vote of the Convention, concurring with the report of the select committee on privileges and elections.

And thereupon the question was propounded, "will the Convention re-consider the vote of concurrence," and determined in the affirmative.

And after much argument had thereon, the question was again submitted, "will the Convention concur with the report," and determined in the affirmative.

And thereupon the Convention adjourned.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 1834.

The Convention met according to adjournment, and was opened with prayer, by the Rev. Mr HESS of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Mr JOHN A. M'KINNEY, from the committee on the subject of emancipation, made the following

REPORT:

The committee to whom was referred the duty of assigning the reasons why the Convention declined acting on the memorials presented on the subject of emancipation, and to whom the memorials on that subject were referred, and to whom said memorials have been recommitted, with instructions to report the number of the memorialists, the parts of the State in which they reside, what number of the memorialists purport to be slaveholders, what plan of emancipation they pur. pose, &c., have again had the subject under consideration and respectfully submit the following additional report:

The committee are aware that a supplemental report in this case has become necessary, from the circumstance that certain members of the Convention have spread upon the journals, and sent abroad to the public, what they are pleased to call a protest against the former report made by this committee, and against the Convention for receiving that report, and also against the manner in which the Convention acted in relation to the memorials, presented by sundry citizens of this State, on the subject of emancipation. In which protest it is asserted, that these memorials came from almost every part of the State; that a large portion of them were slave holders; that they had not proposed any particular plan of emancipation; that the Convention did not treat the memorialists with due respect; that the doctrines contained in the report, are at variance with the spirit of the Gospel, and are subversive of true republicanism; and that the report so accepted by the Convention, is only an apology for slavery. If these assertions be true, then the report ought to be execrated by every member of the community; and the Convention are exceedingly blameable for receiving it and for their want of respect to the memorialists; but, on the contrary, if every one of the statements in the protest are untrue, or mistaken, then a just community, an intelligent public, will lay the blame where it ought to lie. The committee have carefully examined the memorials, and find the number of signatures attached to them, to be one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two; and one memorial has since been received from Knox county, with twenty-two names, which would make the whole number of signers one thousand eight hundred and four. Of whom one hundred and five purport to be slaveholders, and though it may be true, that a few of the memorialists who do not state themselves to be slaveholders, may be so in point of fact, yet the committee, from the inquiry they have made and the means of knowledge they possess on this subject, believe the number to be very inconsiderable, if any. It cannot, therefore, be true, in any common acceptation of the term, that a large portion of the memorialists were slaveholders, as is asserted in the protest, and the inference drawn from that assumed fact, in the protest, is altogeth

er incorrect. The committee are satisfied from the inquiries made by them, that all the slaveholders who signed the memorials presented to the Convention, are not the owners of five hundred slaves, and probably not of half that number; and how the signers of the protest came to draw the inference, that because the owners of some two or three hundred slaves wish to have them emancipated, therefore the owners of the residue of the hundred and fifty thousand slaves in this State, would not remove them from the State, in the manner suggest. ed in the report, the committee cannot tell; but they are sure the conclusion is not a fair deduction from the premises.

The committee further state, that as far as they have been able to ascertain, the memorials came from persons residing in the counties of Washington, Greene, Jefferson, Cocke, Sevier, Blount, M'Minn, Monroe, Knox, Rhea, Roane, Overton, Bedford, Lincoln, Maury and Robertson. That the number of memorialists residing in Washington is two hundred and seventy-three, in Greene, three hundred and seventy-eight, in Maury thirty-three; in Overton sixty-seven, in Robertson twenty-four, in Lincoln one hundred and five, in Bedford one hundred and thirty-nine; but as some of the memorials appear to be signed by the inhabitants of more than one county, the committee cannot designate the number from each; but as far as they have been able to ascertain, the memorialists reside in the counties already named: from which it appears that from forty-six counties in this State, no memorials on the subject of emancipation have been presented; and from more than two-thirds of the sixteen counties from which memorials did come, the signers are very few in number: it is therefore evidently incorrect, that those memorials came from almost every part of the State; and all the inferences drawn from that assumed fact are obviously delusive. And, indeed, when the committee consider the facility with which signers to petitions and memorials, for almost every purpose, can be procured; and when they further reflect, that of the five hundred and fifty thousand, the supposed number of the free white population of this State, only eighteen hundred and four have signed the memorials laid on the table of the Convention, they esteem it any thing else than an expression of the public sentiment on this subject.

The committee further state, that the memorial from the county of Washington, is almost the only one that does not propose a definite plan of emancipation. Of the residue, thirty in number, about one half of the memorials ask to have all the children of slaves in this State, which shall be born after the year 1835 made free, and that all the slaves in the State shall be made free in 1855, (within twenty-one years from this date) and that they shall all be sent out of the State: all the other memorials request, that all the slaves shall be made free against the year 1866, and that they may be colonized. The memorialists, therefore, did propose a plan of emancipation, the utter impracticability of which, must be apparent to all who examine it for a moment. To assert that the hundred and fifty thousand slaves now

in this State, together with their increase, could be emancipated and colonized in the short term of twenty-one or even thirty-two years, with the aid of any means at the command of the State, is a proposition so full of absurdity, that no person in his sober senses, who had taken any time to reflect on the subject, could possibly maintain.

The Committee, on behalf of themselves and the honorable body of which they are members, feel it to be their duty to repel the charge of treating the memorialists with any disrespect. The memorials were

all read at the table by the Secretary, and were listened to attentively by the members: after being read they were laid on the table, until some member would call them up for consideration. The member from Washington moved to have them referred to a select committee of thirteen, (one from each Congressional District,) with instructions to that committee to devise a plan of emancipation in conformity with the prayer of the memorialists. The member from Madison moved to lay the resolution of the member from Washington on the table until after the rise of the Convention; and then the Convention were called upon to decide whether it was right and proper for them to waste time, expend the public money, and kindle ill feelings among the members in discussing a plan, which every member of the Convention knew full well, and none better than those who signed the protest, could not be accomplished; and on this point a large majority of the Convention thought, that duty called on them not to enter upon a discussion which could effect no good, and might produce much evil: but in all this, not a disrespectful word was spoken of the memorials, or the memorialists; no one impugned their motives or expressed any doubts as to the correctness of their intentions; and the Committee are well justified in saying that it was in the flow of good feelings, and as a mark of respect to the memorialists, that a committee was appointed to state the reasons which induced the Convention to refuse to act on the subject. Although, to as many of the memorialists as purported to be slaveholders, the Convention might have said with great propriety, begin the benevolent work you have so much at heart, by emancipating your own slaves and sending them to the land of their ancestors; you cannot reasonably ask other people to be at the expense of colonizing your slaves; your conduct will have a salutary influence in prompting others to do the same; for example is far more persuasive than precept: you need not the aid of the Convention to enable you to do this; and in doing it, you will give a proof of the sincerity of your wishes on the subject, and at the same time you will enrol your names among the benefactors of mankind. To the memorialists who represent themselves as nonslaveholders, they might have said, you need not have knocked at the door of the Convention, asking its aid in a matter in which you are so little interested; if slavery be an evil, from your own showing you are not oppressed with it: if it be a sin to own slaves, that sin lies not at your door, nor will you be answerable for it: if the soil that is moistened by the sweat of the slave, lies under the malediction of Heaven, your soil is not liable to that curse, nor will your crop be injured by it.

In this language the Convention might have addressed the memorialists; but in this language and in this spirit they did not address them. No, they spoke to them in the language of kindness, and in soberness and truth, told them the reason why the prayer of their memorials could not be, and in their opinion ought not to have been, granted. The Committee are, therefore, authorized to say, that it is not true that the memorialists were treated with any disrespect by the Convention. Whether the report heretofore made, and accepted by the Convention, be at variance with the spirit of the Gospel or otherwise, is a question the committee will leave to others to determine: but they may be permitted to remark, that it is at least possible, for persons to talk much about the Gospel, who do not understand its doctrines nor remember its precepts. The committee understand the precepts of the Gospel to be addressed to every one individually; and that the individual so addressed is bound to obey those precepts, under the penalty of receiving such punishments as shall be inflicted by Him who, when he sits in judgment upon the children of men, will deal with each of them according to what he has done, and not according to what his neighbor has done. The committee understand the precepts of the Gospel as calling on every man to obey them himself; but they do not understand them as telling him to take his neighbor by the throat to compel him to obey them. To apply this to the case under consideration, the committee have no doubt that the precepts of the Gospel apply to every man's own conscience on the subject of slavery, and tell the owner of the slave to act accordingly, both as it regards his treatment and his emancipation; but there is no precept known to the committee, which says to any person, you shall compel your neighbor to do whatever you think right in any case. To explain themselves more fully, the committee believe that if any of the persons who signed the protest are slaveholders, then according to their own opinions, as expressed by themselves, they ought instantly to set their slaves free and colonize them; otherwise they will stand condemned by the judgment pronounced by themselves, as violators of the precepts of the Gospel: but while the committee would award to them in the fullest extent, the right to judge their own conduct in this respect; they deny that they have any right to sit in judgment on others and condemn them; they remember the language of holy writ on this very subject: "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant; to his own master he standeth or falleth."

But after all, what can be collected from the sayings and doings of the first teachers of Christianity on the subject of slavery? At the time of the promulgation of the Gospel, slavery existed in that part of the world where the glad tidings of "peace on earth and good will to man" were first proclaimed; and in a much worse form than it now exists in this State; for then the master had the power of life and death in his own hands, and might put his slave to death with impunity; and yet on this subject, we do not hear of one word spoken by the Divine Author of Christianity, nor by his forerunner, nor by his followers and