authorized to the states by the constitution. The true question is whether the national happiness will be promoted or impeded by the importation; and this question ought to be left to the national government, not to the states particularly interested. I cannot believe that the southern states will refuse to confederate on that account, as the power is not likely to be immediately exercised by the general government." Here was the opening to a grant of the power, coupled with a prospect of delay in using it. Williamson, himself no friend of slavery, distinctly intimated that North Carolina would go with her two neighbors on the south. Cotesworth Pinckney now moved to commit the clause, that slaves might be made liable to an equal tax with other imports. "If the convention," said Rutledge, "thinks that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain ;" and he seconded the motion for a commitment. Gouverneur Morris wished the whole subject to be committed, including the clauses relating to taxes on exports and to a navigation act. These things might form a bargain among the northern and southern states. "Rather than to part with the southern states," said Sherman, "it is better to let them import slaves. But a tax on slaves imported makes the matter worse, because it implies they are property." "Two states," said Randolph, "may be lost to the union; let us, then, try the chance of a commitment." The motion. for commitment was adopted by the votes of Connecticut, New Jersey, and the five southernmost states, against New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; Massachusetts was absent. Charles Pinckney and Langdon then moved to commit the section relating to a navigation act. "I desire it to be remembered," said Gorham, remotely hinting at possible secession, "the eastern states have no motive to union but a commercial one." Ellsworth, maintaining the position which he had deliberately chosen, answered: "I am for taking the plan as it is. If we do not agree on this middle and moderate ground, I am afraid we shall lose two states with others that may stand aloof; and fly, most probably, into several confederations, not without bloodshed." * Had the convention listened to no compromise on the slave-trade, Georgia and South Carolina would not have accepted the new constitution; North Carolina would have clung to them, from its internal condition; Virginia, however earnest might have been the protest against it by Madison and Washington, must have acted with North Carolina, and, as a consequence, there would from the beginning have been a federation of slave-holding states. The committee to which the whole subject of restriction on the power over commerce was referred consisted of Langdon, King, Johnson, the aged William Livingston of New Jersey, Clymer, Dickinson, Martin, Madison, Williamson, Cotesworth Pinckney, and Baldwin,† a large majority of them venerable for uprightness and ability. Their report, made on the twenty-fourth, denied to the United States the power to prohibit the slave-trade prior to the year 1800, but granted the power to impose a tax or duty on such migration or importation at a rate not exceeding the average of the duties laid on imports. On the twenty-fifth, when the report of the committee of eleven was taken up, Cotesworth Pinckney immediately moved to extend the time allowed for the importation of slaves till the year 1808. Gorham was his second. Madison spoke earnestly against the prolongation ; # but, without further debate, the motion prevailed by the votes of the three New England states, Maryland, and the three southernmost states, against New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. || Sherman once more resisted the duty "as acknowledging men to be property " by taxing them as such under the character of slaves; and Madison supported him, saying: "I think it wrong to admit in the constitution the idea that there can be property in men." A But, as the impost which had been proposed on all imported articles was of five per cent and the slave was deemed to have an average value of two hundred dollars, the rate was fixed definitively at ten dollars on every *Gilpin, 1388-1396; Elliot, 456–461. # Gilpin, 1427; Elliot, 477. Gilpin, 1429; Elliot, 478. A Gilpin, 1429, 1430; Elliot, 478. imported slave, and the clause thus amended was unanimously held fast as a discouragement of the traffic. "It ought to be considered," wrote Madison near the time, "as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever within these states a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!"* The confederation granted no power to interfere with the slave-trade. The new constitution gave power to prohibit it in new states immediately on their admission, in existing states at the end of the year 1807. Louisiana, by annexation to the union, lost the license to receive slaves from abroad. On the second day of December 1806, Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States of America, addressed this message to congress: "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe." Unanimous legislation followed the words from the president, and, as the year 1808 broke upon the United States, the importation of slaves had ceased. And did slavery have as peaceful an end? Philanthropy, like genius and like science, must bide its time. Man cannot hurry the supreme power, to which years are as days. Two members of the convention, with the sincere integrity which clears the eye for prophetic vision, read the doom of slave-holding. Mason, fourteen years before, in a paper prepared for the legislature of Virginia, had given his opinion that as the natural remedy for political injustice the constitution should by degrees work itself clear by its own innate strength, the virtue and resolution of the community; and added: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge upon *The Federalist, No. xlii. Journals of Congress, v., 468. our posterity the injury done to a set of wretches whom our injustice hath debased almost to a level with the brute creation. These remarks were extorted by a kind of irresistible, perhaps an enthusiastic, impulse; and the author of them, conscious of his own good intentions, cares not whom they please or of fend." * During a previous debate on the value of slaves, Mason had observed of them that they might in cases of emergency themselves become soldiers.† On the twenty-second of August he called to mind that Cromwell, when he sent commissioners to Virginia to take possession of the country, gave them power to arm servants and slaves. He further pointed out that the British might have prevailed in the South in the war of the revolution had they known how to make use of the slaves; that in Virginia the royal governor invited them to rise at a time when he was not in possession of the country, and, as the slaves were incapable of self-organization and direction, his experiments by proclamation, addressed to them in regions not within his sway, totally failed; but that in South Carolina, where the British were in the full possession of the country, they might have enfranchised the slaves and enrolled them for the consolidation and establishment of the royal authority. But the civil and military officers in those days of abject corruption chose rather to enrich themselves by shipping the slaves to the markets of the West Indies. Five months later Madison, in a paper addressed to the country, remarked: "An unhappy species of population abounds in some of the states who, during the calm of the regular government, are sunk below the level of men; but who, in the tempestuous scenes of civil violence, may emerge into the human character, and give a superiority of strength to any party with which they may associate themselves." # Slave-holding was to be borne down on the field of battle. The dignity and interests of the United States alike de * George Mason's extracts from the Virginia charters, with some remarks on them, made in the year 1773. MS. The paper, though communicated to the legislature of Virginia, has not been found in its archives. My copy, which is, perhaps, the only one now in existence, I owe to the late James M. Mason. Gilpin, 1068; Elliot, 296. Gilpin, 1390; Elliot, 458. # Madison in the Federalist, No. xliii., published 25 January 1788. manded a grant of power to the general government for the regulation of foreign as well as domestic trade. Without it the navigation of the country would have been at the mercy of foreign restrictions. For this regulation the new constitution required, as in all other acts of legislation, no more than a majority of the two houses of congress. A strong opposition started up in the South under the lead of Charles Pinckney and Martin, inflamed by Mason and by Randolph; but it was in vain. On the twenty-ninth, Madison, Spaight, and Rutledge defended the report of the eleven like statesmen, free from local influences or prejudice. It was clearly stated that the ships of nations in treaty with the United States would share in their carrying trade; that a rise in freight could be but temporary, because it would be attended by an increase of southern as well as of northern shipping; that the West India trade was a great object to be obtained only through the pressure of a navigation act. Cotesworth Pinckney owned that he had been prejudiced against the eastern states, but had found their delegates as liberal and as candid as any men whatever. On the question, Delaware and South Carolina joined the united North against Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. After this vote the convention accepted unanimously the proposition to grant to the majority in the two branches of congress full power to make laws regulating commerce and navigation. Randolph was so much dissatisfied that he expressed a “doubt whether he should be able to agree to the constitution." Mason, more deeply in earnest, as yet held his emotions in check. Of new states, the Virginia plan knew those only "lawfully arising within the limits of the United States," and for their admission vaguely required less than a unanimous vote; the committee of detail demanded the consent of two thirds of each house of congress, as well as the concurrence of the states within whose "limits" the new states should arise. At this stage Gouverneur Morris enlarged the scope and simplified the language of the article. The confederation had opened the door to Canada at its own choice alone, and to any other territory that could obtain the consent of two thirds of congress. It was no longer decent to hold out to Canada an invitation to annex itself to the union; but the American mind, in |