Note 2 — A DISCOURSE, &c.

In some of the states, even where slavery is abolished, the blacks are disfranchised of the rights of citizens. To the eternal disgrace of our own state, the despotick principles of our Constitution have been multiplied instead of being diminished by the late Convention. By the old Constitution, only one class of citizens were divested of certain natural rights without having committed any crime to forfeit them. But by the present Constitution there are two. And the reasons in both cases are very similar; in the one, wearing a black coat, and in the other, a black skin. But the operation of these regulations is much more oppressive in the latter, than in the former case. The colour of a man’s dress depends on his own will; but, “the Ethiopian CANNOT change his skin,” if he would.