The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

Gen.] GENEALOGY. 211
of the terms of judicial officers and giving their appointment to the
people, and some other things intended to take patronage from public
officers and bring it as near as possible to the people in their primary
organizations, which caused some of the warmest debates in the con-
vention, he was in the minority. He was in advance of the people.
He lived to see his principles more fully carried out in the revised
constitution of New York ; and that they will more generally prevail
than they have done, there can be no doubt."
He was " born and bred " an opponent of slavery, and from a com-
paratively early period in the great struggle for the emancipation of
the chattelized American negroes, he took an active and prominent
part. Soon after he went to Philadelphia he joined, and for many
years was one of its counsellors, the old anti-slavery society of which
Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush had long before been
members. After the accomplishment of the revision of the Pennsyl-
vania Constitution, he took no active part in the politics of the State,
and devoted more of his time and energy to the promotion of the anti-
slavery cause. In consequence of individual peculiarity of opinion
upon " side issues," or points, principles and methods of action minor
to the great object aimed at, he was not an " abolitionist," in the tech-
nical and limited sense of the word which was prevalent at that time ;
but, by constitution, by heritage, by education and by conviction, he
was always an '* abolitionist," in its true and general signification,
as applied to slavery. And during the decade from 1838 to 1848,
few men in the country devoted so much time and labor gratuitously,
as he, to the advancement of the enterprise for the redemption of the
nation from the ignominy of permitting and sustaining the holding of
human beings as chattels. In the business of the anti-slavery meet-
ings he was ever active, and to the columns of the anti-slavery periodicals—
particularly The Pennsylvania?! and The Pennsylvania
Freeman—he was an abundant contributor.
In the canvass of 1840, for the presidency of the United States, the
Liberty Party, then just organized, elected him as their candidate for
vice-president, on the ticket with James G. Birney for president.
The correspondence in relation to this appointment is placed in the
Appendix.
As early as 1823, he published a pamphlet on " The Right of
States to alter or annul Charters," a copy of which, with a letter,
was sent to Thomas Jefferson and elicited from him, in reply, the
following vigorously expressed comment
: