Note 137 — Part I (continued 9)

Dr. Stuber's note, cited in Writings, X, 86-7: "Dr. Franklin's name, as President of the Abolition Society, was signed to the memorial presented to the House of Representatives of the United States, on the 12th of February, 1789, praying them to exert the full extent of power vested in them by the Constitution, in discouraging the traffic of the human species. This was his last public act. In the debates to which this memorial gave rise, several attempts were made to justify the trade. In the Federal Gazette of March 25th, 1790, there appeared an essay, signed Historicus, written by Dr. Franklin, in which he communicated a Speech, said to have been delivered in the Divan of Algiers, in 1687, in opposition to the prayer of the petition of a sect called Erika, or Purists, for the abolition of piracy and slavery. This pretended African speech was an excellent parody of one delivered by Mr. Jackson, of Georgia. All the arguments, urged in favour of negro slavery, are applied with equal force to justify the plundering and enslaving of Europeans. It affords, at the same time, a demonstration of the futility of the arguments in defence of the slave-trade, and of the strength of mind and ingenuity of the author, at his advanced period of life. It furnishes, too, a no less convincing proof of his power of imitating the style of other times and nations, than his Parable against Persecution. And as the latter led many persons to search the Scriptures with a view to find it, so the former caused many persons to search the bookstores and libraries for the work from which it was said to be extracted." According to the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XX, 50, the memorial was presented in 1790.