That vessel which sailed up James River in 1620 with negroes on board which had been stolen in Africa, and were sold to the planters at Jamestown, now sailed into the Convention. The negroes were several hundred thousand.

The merchants of Newport, Rhode Island, and Boston, before the Revolution, made a great deal of money by sending their ships to the West Indies for molasses, which they transported to Boston and Newport, distilled into rum, and then sent the ships with the rum to Africa, where they purchased negro slaves, brought them to the West Indies, Charleston, Savannah, or Norfolk, sold them to the planters, then loaded their vessels with molasses again, to make more rum to send to Africa for another cargo of slaves. Few people saw any wrong in it. Negroes were not thought of as being men, although colored men had fought under Washington to enable the people to gain their freedom. There were not many slaves in the Northern States. The people of those States had small farms, and could not afford to own slaves. There was not one in Massachusetts. In New Hampshire there were only one hundred and fiftyeight; in Rhode Island nine hundred and fifty-two; Connecticut had two thousand seven hundred and fifty; New York twenty-one thousand; New Jersey eleven thousand; Pennsylvania thirty-seven hundred; Delaware nine thousand.

The Southern States had large numbers-Maryland one hundred and three thousand; Virginia two hundred and ninety-three thousand; South Carolina one hundred and seven thonsand; Georgia twenty-nine thousand. In the Southern States the plantations were large, the climate mild, and slaves could be made profitable.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin looked hopefully forward to a time when slavery would die out in the Southern States, as it was dying in the Northern, but the thistle-seed was spreading instead.

How should the negroes be reckoned under the Constitution? They were not voters, but they were inhabitants, and representatives were to be apportioned according to population.

"Slaves are not citizens; they cannot vote; they ought not to be reckoned," said the delegates from the Northern States.

"They are inhabitants, and must be counted in," replied the members of the Southern States.

"North Carolina never will accept the Constitution unless they are reckoned at least as three-fifths," said Mr. Davis, from that State.

"Slavery is a curse," responded Gouverneur Morris, of New York. "On what principle are you to reckon them? Are they men? Then

they ought to be citizens and become voters. Are they property? Why, then, ought not all property-cattle, horses, and hogs-to be reckoned at three-fifths?"

If a slave should run away from his master to another State, how should he be carried back?

"He should be delivered up on claim of the owner," said the Southern States. They carried their points, and it was written down that the States might obtain all the slaves they wanted from Africa for twenty years; that in the apportionment for representation a slave should be reckoned as three-fifths of a white man; that if a slave escaped into another State he should be delivered up by that State; that the slave-trade between the United States and Africa should cease in 1808.

The people of the United States were far in advance of the people of any other land in their recognition of the rights of men, but the idea had not dawned upon them that negroes had any civil rights, or that slavery was wrong. The people of the Northern States, except here and there an individual, thought of slavery only as not being profitable. The sentence which Thomas Jefferson put into the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal and endowed with inalienable rights, had reference to white men; he was not thinking of negroes.

All through the summer the delegates discussed the momentous questions that came before them, not quite knowing what they wanted.

"The delegates," wrote Jeremy Belknap, "did not know their own minds; they were like a man buying a suit of smallclothes which did not. fit him. They were too small, and must be let out; too big, and must be taken in; afraid that there would be a hole, and a patch must be put on; that the buttons were not strong enough, and others must be substituted."

The delegates allowed none but themselves to be present at the deliberations. The world will never know how eloquent or how foolish, at times, their talk, or how angry their words. But the men who had achieved their freedom were wise enough to see that no man could live to himself alone; that no one State could live by itself; but that something must be given up to secure the greatest good of all. They agreed that there should be a chief executive officer, who must sign the laws, and see that they were executed. They created departments of State, Treasury, and War. There was to be a second executive officer, who was to preside over the Senate. What should be the titles of the first and second executives? Kings and emperors delight in high-sounding names-as if a title could add to their dignity. Henry IV. of England had the title of "Grace." Henry VI. called himself "Excellent Grace." Edward IV., not content with that,

assumed the title of "Most High and Mighty Prince." IIenry VIII. was "Dread Sovereign." The Pope gave him another title, "Defender of the Faith." James I., whom the people called a "wise fool," assumed the title of "Sacred and Most Excellent Majesty;" and from that time to the present the kings of England have been called "His Majesty," and the queens "Her Majesty." Some of the members of the Convention thought that the President should be called "His Excellency."

Benjamin Franklin was a member. He hated shams and superfluity, and loved truth and simplicity. "In that case," he said, "I suppose, the Vice-President ought to be called 'His Most Superfluous Highness."

Sarcasm and ridicule, sometimes, are far more powerful than argument. The Convention saw how ridiculous it would be to call the President "His Excellency," how inconsistent with the character of a government of the people, and voted that he should be called simply

"The President."

So that agreement signed in the cabin of the Mayflower (see "Story of Liberty "), on a dreary winter day, by the men who had left the Old World that they might have liberty to worship God in their own way, and not as dictated by King James and the archbishops and bishops of England, or by the Pope at Rome, after a century and a half of struggles and privatious, blossomed into a written Constitution-the first the world had

ever seen.

While the National Convention was discussing the Constitution the Congress of the confederation was in session at New York. Only eight of the thirteen States were represented. It passed an ordinance for the government of the North-west Territory--the great region of country north and west of the Ohio River into which men from Connecticut and Massachusetts were ready to move.

Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, wrote the paper in which it was declared that there should be no slaves in the Territory after the year eighteen hundred, but it also declared that slaves from other States should be given up if they escaped into the Territory. The last was a seed which brought forth a great crop of thistles sixty years later. The Constitution was not to be binding upon the States until adopted by nine of the thirteen.

What would be the effect of the Constitution? Those who framed it were firm in the belief that it would work for the good of the people; but Patrick Henry, of Virginia, who had made patriotic speeches for liberty before the Revolution, opposed it. "The President will become a king," he said. There was great opposition to it in New York. General Lamb

and many of the politicians opposed it. Alexander Hamilton, who had helped frame it, used all of his influence and his great ability to secure its adoption by the people of the State. He wrote a remarkable series of articles which were published in the newspaper, and afterward in a volume entitled "The Federalist." Delaware was the first State to adopt it;

then Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. That made the nine States; but Virginia and New York were great States, and unless adopted by them the Constitution would be a failure. The influence of Washington, Madison, and Monroe secured its adoption by Virginia. The people in the City of New York were in favor of it; but the Legislature was almost evenly divided. The people in the city determined to have a grand celebration, to let the Legislature know how they regarded it. Never, on this side of the Atlantic, had there been so grand a procession.

First came a company of cavalry, with trumpeters in advance; then a company of artillery, with cannon; then wood-choppers, with their axes; then farmers, with a plongh drawn by three yoke of oxen, another team dragging a harrow; and other farmers with rakes, pitchforks, and flails. Another team drew a newly-invented thrashing-machine. Following were

the members of the Society of Cincinnati-officers who had fought in the Revolution-in their uniform. Then came a company of gardeners wearing green. After them the tailors, with a band of music. Then the bakers, wearing white caps and frocks, and blue sashes, carrying bunches of roses tied with red ribbons. Never was there another loaf of bread like theirs on a car drawn by ten bay horses. It took a barrel of flour to make it, and to bake it they were obliged to build an oven for the purpose. After the bakers came the brewers, with casks of ale. On one of the casks stood a boy with a silver goblet to represent the old god Bacchus. This was the first division of the procession.

The coopers headed the second division-thirteen boys in advance, wearing white frocks and trousers, with green ribbons tied around their ankles. After them came forty-two men, their hats decorated with oakleaves. In a wagon, drawn by four horses, four coopers were at work on an old cask, representing the old Confederation, which kept tumbling to pieces; by its side was a new cask, which represented the Constitution, which, the more they pounded it, became all the stronger. After the coopers were the butchers, in their white frocks, with a meat-stall on a car, and a fat ox following, with ribbons on his horns. Next came the tanners, curriers, skinners, glove, waistcoat, and leather breeches and parchment makers; rope-makers; three hundred and forty shoemakers, some of them at work on their benches, in a wagon; two hundred carpenters, with their saws and planes; the furriers, with an Indian leading a horse. Two bears sat on a pile of furs on the horse's back. Another Indian, wearing a scarlet blanket, smoked a tomahawk pipe. Hatters and wig-makers followed; and the confectioners, carrying a great loaf four and a half feet in diameter made of sugar, and a great cake.

After them came the stone-masons, with the Temple of Fame on a car -a building representing the United States. It had thirteen pillars-ten of them in place, the other three ready to be reared. On those in place was the motto:

"The foundation is firm-the materials good,

Each pillar's cemented with patriots' blood."

The upholsterers came with a gorgeous canopy, nineteen feet high, of blue satin, hung with gold and silver fringe, beneath which stood the Goddess of Liberty. The lace and fringe weavers bore a banner with this inscription:

"Never let it perish, but piously transmit it to your children."

The blacksmiths and nail-makers had a bellows, forge, and anvil on a car, and while the procession was moving kept the bellows roaring and