eventful days, never flagged, and on several occasions, and especially on the Mississippi debate, were wrought to a pitch of excitement which, whether we consider the actors or the subject, was hardly exceeded by the most brilliant theatrical exhibitions. And I may venture to add that, since Death has set his seal on all the actors, and their whole lives are before us, if a more accurate and faithful delineation of their motives and actions, of their persons even-of their dress, manners, and attainments-than could have been possessed by the bulk of their contemporaries, separated by miles of forest from one another, at a time when there was not in the State a mail-coach, a post, or a press worthy of the name, and when there could be but little personal communion between individuals, be not fairly placed before the present generation, it will be owing somewhat indeed to the difficulties of the theme itself, but more to the inca. pacity or negligence of the historian who attempts to record it. Since the adjournment of the Convention, seventy years have nearly elapsed; and in that interval two entire generations have been born, lived, and passed away. Nor has the change been felt in human life alone. This populous city, which now surrounds us with its laboratories of the arts, with its miles of railways and canals, with its immense basin and capacious docks, with its river bristling with masts and alive with those gay steamers that skirt our streams as well as those dark and statelier ones that assail the sea, with its riches collected from every clime, with its superb dwellings, with its structures reared to education, literature, and religion, with those electric wires which hold it in in stantaneous rapport with Boston and New Orleans-places which, at the time of the Convention, could only be reached by weeks and even months of tedious travel-and which are destined to connect it, ere another lustrum be past, with London and Paris, with St. Petersburg and Vienna, and with its numerous lamps which diffuse, at the setting of the sun, a splendor compared with which the lights kindled by our fathers in honor of Saratoga and York, or of Bridgewater and New Orleans, would be faint and dim, was a straggling hamlet, its humble tenements scattered over the sister hills, and its muddy and ungraded streets trenched upon by the shadows of an unbroken forest. This

8 Morse describes Richmond in 1789, one year later, as having three hundred houses.

venerable building in which we are now assembled, which was originally modelled after one of the most graceful temples of the Old World, and which overlooks one of the loveliest landscapes of the New, was yet unfinished; and the marble image of Washington, which for more than two thirds of a century has guarded its portals, which has been recently invested with a new immortality by the genius of Hubard,' and which, we fondly hope, will

9 William James Hubard (pronounced Hu-bard), the son of an artist of ability, was born in Warwick, England, August 20th, 1807. He early exhibited a proclivity for art, and “pursued his studies in France, Germany, and Italy."

There is evidence of the progress made by him in a testimonial preserved by his family-a silver palette which bears the inscription: "Awarded to Master James Hubard by the admirers of his genius in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. February 14, 1824."

He came to America in this year, and was for some time a resident of Philadelphia. Later he made Virginia his home, marrying, in 1838, Miss Maria Mason Tabb, of Gloucester county, a lady of means and a member of an influential family. In the same year he revisited Europe, returning after an absence of more than three years to Virginia, and settling finally in Richmond. His art life was an active one, as is evinced in numerous works from his easel-original conceptions, portraits, and copies from the masters-all marked by his characteristic boldness and beauty of color A little while before the period of the text (1856), he fixed his residence in the western suburbs of Richmond, near that of an erratic brother artist, Edward Peticolas. This last building, coming into his possession upon the death of his friend, he converted into a foundry, specially for the reproduction in bronze of Houdon's matchless Washington which graces the rotunda of our Capitol. There were six of these admirable casts-each a single piece of metal-an accomplishment not often attempted. Of these, one is at the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, two in North Carolina-one at Raleigh and the other at Charlotte-a fourth in Central Park, New York city, a fifth in St. Louis, Missouri, and a sixth in the grounds of the University of Missouri at Columbia Early in the late war between the States, Hubard converted part of his studio into a laboratory and engaged in the filling of shrapnel shells with a compound of his own invention. These shells, it is said, served the famous Merrimac. Hubard's foundry is said also to have supplied light and powerful field pieces to many of the early artillery companies of the Confederate Army.

On the morning of the 14th of February, 1862, whilst Hubard was engaged in filling a shell, a spark ignited the compound. The explosion inflicted fatal injuries, from which he died on the following day.

transmit to distant ages the life-like semblance of the great original, had indeed received the last touches of the chisel of Houdon, but had not been lifted to its pedestal. Our territory, though not as large as it had been, was larger than it is now. Virginia had added to the Federal Government, four years before the meeting of the Convention, her northwestern lands, which now constitute several States of the Union;10 but still held the soil from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. For Kentucky, who, if not matre filia pulchrior, was worthy of the stock from which she sprung, though destined soon to leave her happy home, yet clung to the bosom of her mother."

Hubard was a gifted man, and it was claimed would have attained greater distinction in modeling than in limning. An early work of his, executed at Florence, is said to have enthusiastically stirred the Sculptor Greenough an Indian chief, with his horse in full strain, to whom a flash of lightning reveals a precipice immediately before him. This conception Hubard afterwards committed to canvass.

Nor was the pen of Hubard idle. He left in MS. a critical work on Art in America, and a novel, both of which were pronounced by competent critics productions of merit. They were unfortunately destroyed in the pillage of his residence April 3, 1865. Two children of Hubard survive-Wm. James Hubard and Mrs. Eliza Gordon, wife of Rev. John James Lloyd, Abingdon, Va. The editor is indebted to Mrs. Lloyd, through the mediation of Mann S. Valentine, Esq., of Richmond, who was an intimate friend of the lamented Hubard, for the preceding details. Mr. Valentine includes in his numerous art possessions many of the best examples of Hubard's genius.

10 Virginia made the cession in January, 1781, but "it was not finally completed and accepted until March, 1789." Curtis's Hist. Con., I, 137.

"As the delegates from Kentucky played an important role in the Convention, it may be proper to state that the District, as it was then called, was divided into seven counties, which, with their delegates, are as follows: Bourbon: Henry Lee, Notlay Conn; Fayette: Humphrey Marshall, John Fowler; Jefferson: Robert Breckenridge, Rice Bullock; Lincoln: John Logan, Henry Pawling; Madison: John Miller, Green Clay; Nelson: Matthew Walton, John Steele; Mercer: Thomas Allen, Alexander Robertson. Mann Butler, in his history of Kentucky, has fallen into one or two errors in the names of the delegates, which he probably learned from hearsay. The above list is copied from the Journal. Kentucky, soon after the adjournment of the Convention, formed a constitution for herself, and was duly admitted as one of the

The population of the State demands a deliberate notice. In spite of the numbers that had perished from disease and exposure during the war, that had been abstracted by the British,12 that had sought the flat lands of Ohio, or that had married and settled abroad, it had, since that great day on which the people of Virginia, in convention assembled, had declared their independence of the British Crown, been steadily advancing, and from five hundred and sixty thousand at the date of the August Convention of 1774, had now reached over eight hundred thousand. Of this number, five hundred and three thousand two hundred and forty-eight were whites, twelve thousand eight hundred and eighty were free colored, and three hundred and five thousand two hundred and fifty-seven were slaves.13 Her numbers might well inspire the respect of her sisters and the pride of her sons, and sufficiently explain the position which she held in the Confederation. Her population was over three-fourths of all that of New England. It was not far from double that of Pennsylvania. It was not far from three times that of New York. It was over three-fourths of all the population of the Southern States. It exceeded by sixty thousand that of North Carolina and what was afterwards called Tennessee, of South Carolina, and of Georgia; and it was more than a fifth of the population of the whole Union.

But the topic which claims the most serious attention, not only of the general reader but of the political economists and of the

States of the Union at the same time with Vermont-one on the 9th, the other on the 18th of February, 1791. It is to the presence of the Kentucky delegation that we owe the exciting drama of the Mississippi debate.

12 Mr. Jefferson estimated the number of negroes taken off in a single campaign at one-fifth of the entire black population of the State, and the seaboard suffered severely throughout the war.

13 Professor Tucker, bringing the lights of the modern census to bear upon our Colonial population, estimates that of Virginia in 1774 to have been 500,000. (History U. S., I, 96.) The census of 1790 puts it down at 738,308, nearly sixty-two thousand less than the number stated in the text, which, from a careful examination made some years ago, I believe to be the true one. Indeed, the extent of Virginia at that period, which reached from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the unsettled state of the country, the scattered population, made the taking of a correct census impossible.

statesmen, and in comparison with which the questions of the extent of our territory and the number of the population appear almost unimportant, is the condition of the commerce of Virginia when the Federal Constitution was presented for ratification. It was under her own control. Her trade was free; the duties levied upon foreign commerce were laid by herself, and were collected by her officers. She had her own custom houses, her own marine hospitals, and her own revenue cutters bearing her own flag. Her imposts were light, because it was then deemed unwise to lay burdens upon trade, and partly from an apprehension not unfounded that a heavy duty laid upon a particular article of merchandise might direct the whole of an assorted cargo from her ports to the ports of a more liberal neighbor." Yet the amount of duties collected for several years previous to the Convention constituted one of the largest items received into the treasury, and at the low rate of duty ranging from one to five per cent., represented an import trade of several millions.

Or, to speak with greater precision, the net amount of money in round numbers received into the treasury of Virginia from customs accruing during the three-quarters of the year ending the 31st of May, 1788, was sixty thousand pounds, which in our present currency are equivalent to two hundred thousand dollars. 15 The customs of the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, ending the thirty-first of August, are not given; and, as during that interval the customs on the cargoes brought back in return for the tobacco crop carried out in the spring were received, it probably exceeded two-fold the product of either of the two preceding quarters; but we will place it in common with the other quarters at sixty-six thousand dollars. This sum of two hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars would represent, under an average tariff of five per centum, an import trade of over five millions of dollars. And from the present value of money, five millions at that time would be nearly equal to ten millions at the present day. And farther, as credit then was comparatively

14 John Randolph used to allude to the tradition that duties laid by Virginia on certain articles, which were admitted free of duty into Maryland, was the main cause of the rise of Baltimore.

15 For the receipts from custom see the annual report of the Treasurer in the Journals of the Senate and House of Delegates of each year from 1783 to 1788.