ernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty
tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. He lamented
that some of our Eastern brethren, from a lust of gain, had embarked in
this nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the
right to import, that was the case of many other rights now to be given
up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that the General
Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery."

Ellsworth, not well pleased with this thrust at his slave-trading
friends at the North by a slaveholder, tartly replied: "As I have never
owned a slave, I cannot judge of the effects of slavery on character;
but if slavery is to be considered in a moral light, the convention
ought to go further, and free those already in the country." The
opposition of Virginia and Maryland to the importation of slaves he
attributed to the fact that, on account of their rapid increase in those
States, "it was cheaper to raise them there than to import them, while
in the sickly rice-swamps foreign supplies were necessary. If we stop
short with prohibiting their importation, we shall be unjust to South
Carolina and Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As population increases,
poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery, in
time, will not be a speck in our country."

Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia repeated the declaration that
"if the slave trade were prohibited, these States would not adopt the
Constitution." "Virginia," it was said, "would gain by stopping the
importation, she having slaves to sell; but it would be unjust to South
Carolina and Georgia to be deprived of the right of importing. Besides,
the importation of slaves would be a benefit to the whole Union: The
more slaves, the more produce, the greater carrying trade, the more
consumption, the more revenue."

The injustice of exempting slaves from duty, while every other import
was subject to it, having been urged by several members in the course of
the debate, Charles Pinckney expressed his consent to a tax not
exceeding the same on other imports, and moved to refer the subject to a
committee. The motion was seconded by John Rutledge, and, at the
suggestion of Gouverneur Morris, was so modified as to include the
clauses relating to navigation laws and taxes on exports. The commitment
was opposed by Messrs. Sherman and Ellsworth; the former on the ground
that taxes on slav