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is a town somewhat celebrated in its banking history. My remarks here, however, apply simply to the external building, and not to its internal honesty and wisdom, or to its commercial credit. In Philadelphia also stands the old house of Congress--the house in which the Congress of the United States was held previous to 1800, when the government and the Congress with it were moved to the new City of Washington. I believe, however, that the first Congress, properly so called, was assembled at New York in 1789, the date of the inauguration of the first President. It was, however, here in this building at Philadelphia that the independence of the Union was declared in 1776, and that the Constitution of the United States was framed. Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia for its capital, was once the leading State of the Union, leading by a long distance. At the end of the last century it beat all the other States in population, but has since been surpassed by New York in all respects--in population, commerce, wealth, and general activity. Of course it is known that Pennsylvania was granted to William Penn, the Quaker, by Charles II. I cannot completely understand what was the meaning of such grants--how far they implied absolute possession in the territory, or how far they confirmed simply the power of settling and governing a colony. In this case a very considerable property was confirmed; as the claim made by Penn's children, after Penn's death, was bought up by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 130,000l., which, in those days, was a large price for almost any landed estate on the other side of the Atlantic. Pennsylvania lies directly on the borders of slave land, being immediately north of Maryland. Mason and Dixon's line, of which we hear so often, and which was first established as the division between slave soil and free soil, runs between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The little State of Delaware, which lies between Maryland and the Atlantic, is also tainted with slavery, but the stain is not heavy nor indelible. In a population of a hundred and twelve thousand, there are not two thousand slaves, and of these the owners generally would willingly rid themselves if they could. It is, however, a point of honor with these owners, as it is also in Maryland, not to sell their slaves; and a man who cannot sell his slaves must keep them. Were he to enfranchise them and send them about their business, they would come back upon his hands. Were he to enfranchise them and pay them wages for work, they would get the wages, but he would not get the work. They would get the wages; but at the end of three months they would still fall back upon his hands in debt and distress, looking to him for aid and comfort as a child looks for it. It is not easy to get rid of a slave in a slave State. That question of enfranchising slaves is not one to be very readily solved. In Pennsylvania the right of voting is confined to free white men. In New York the colored free men have the right to vote, providing they have a certain small property qualification, and have been citizens for three years in the State, whereas a white man need have been a citizen but for ten days, and need have no property qualification--from which it is seen that the position of the negro becomes worse, or less like that of a white man, as the border of slave land is more nearly reached. But, in the teeth of this embargo on colored men, the constitution of Pennsylvania asserts broadly that all men are born equally free and independent. One cannot conceive how two clauses can have found their way into the same document so absolutely contradictory to each other. The first clause says that white men shall vote, and that black men shall not--which means that all political action shall be confined to white men. The second clause says that all men are born equally free and independent. In Philadelphia I for the first time came across live secessionists--secessionists who pronounced themselves to be such. I will not say that I had met in other cities men who falsely declared