History of Liberia

these should remain with their parents till a given age, after which they should be taught at public expense agriculture and the useful arts. When full-grown they were to be "colonized to such a place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of the household and handicraft arts, pairs of the useful domestic animals, etc.; to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection till they have acquired strength."

Such in outline was Jefferson's contribution to the colonization idea. Its influence was unquestionably great: the "Notes on Virginia," privately circulated after 1781, and at length published in 1787, went through eight editions before 1800, and must have been familiar to nearly all of those concerned in the formation of the Colonization Society.

Clearer still must the details of Jefferson's project have been in the minds of the members of the Virginia Legislature in 1800, when, after the outbreak of