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“2. That they are decidedly opposed to modern Abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave, as it exists in the slaveholding States of this Union.

“3. That the foregoing preamble and resolutions be published in our periodicals.”

The report of the Judiciary Committee is here given also, touching this question at another point:

“The Judiciary Committee, to whom was referred the petition of the official members of the Methodist Episcopal Church on Lancaster Circuit, Baltimore Conference, report, that the petition referred to them is an able document, drawn up in the most respectful language, and signed by twenty-nine individuals, who claimed to be official members of the Methodist Episcopal Church on Lancaster Circuit.

“The petitioners first invite the attention of the General Conference to the section of the Discipline which states that ‘no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter, when the laws of the State in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom,’ etc. They then produce an extract of the laws from the commonwealth of Virginia, showing their extreme rigor in this matter, ‘That any emancipated slave (with exceptions too rare to be looked for in one case out of many) remaining in the commonwealth more than twelve months after his or her right to freedom shall have arrived, contrary to the provisions of this act, shall be sold by the overseers of the poor, in any county in which he or she may be found, for the benefit of the literary fund.’ In view of this act they claim that they, as official members, are protected by the Discipline of the Church, as they deem it to be precisely one of the exceptions to the General Rule provided for in the Discipline; and especially as under the existing laws of the commonwealth to emancipate their slaves would, in many cases, be an act of cruelty to the slaves themselves. The matter of complaint by the petitioners is, that the construction put upon this rule by the Baltimore Annual Conference, in certain acts respecting individuals connected with this section of the work, is subversive of their rights and oppressive in its bearings; that they require the same submission to the rule of persons in that State as of those in sections where the legal disability to comply with it does not exist, regardless of the exceptions. And they respectfully solicit the interference of the General Conference, either to revise the rule, or give it such construction as to afford them relief in the premises; or, finally, if neither be done, to cause them to be set off to the Virginia Conference.