nd
the two southernmost States, might still hold good. Or there may have
been a new bargain; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a tacit
recognition of the eternal fitness of things, and made common cause
where legislation threatened at the same time the distillery and the
slave-ship.[11] At any rate, the extreme Southerners expressed surprise
at the audacity which would disturb a compromise of the Constitution;
the extreme Northerners deprecated it as quite uncalled for in any
consideration of the subject of revenue. The principle of Mr. Parker's
motion, Mr. Sherman of Connecticut thought, was to correct a moral evil;
the principle of the bill before the House was to raise a revenue. At
some other time he would be willing to consider the question of taxing
the importation of negroes on the ground of humanity and policy; but it
was a sufficient reason with him for not admitting it as an object of
revenue that the burden would fall upon two States only. Fisher Ames of
Massachusetts could only take counsel of his conscience. From his soul,
he said, he detested slavery; and--forgetting, apparently, that this
tax was provided for by the Constitution--he doubted whether imposing it
"would not have the appearance of authorizing the practice" of trading
in slaves. This was his reason for wishing to postpone the subject. But
Mr. Livermore of New Hampshire was more ingenious still. If the imported
negroes were goods, wares, or merchandise, they would come within the
title of the bill, and be taxed under the general rule of five per
centum, which would be about the same rate as ten dollars a head; but if
they were not goods, wares, or merchandise, then such importation could
not properly be included in the consideration of the question of a
revenue from duties on such articles of trade.

Mr. Madison came to the help of his colleague, and brushed aside the
sophistries of the New England allies of the slave traders. If there
were anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover this particular
duty, it was easy to add it. If the question was not one of taxation
because it was one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to deal
with it under any other bill for levying a duty as under this. If the
tax seemed unjust because it bore heavily upon a single class, that
would be a good reason for remitting many taxes which there was no
hesitation in imposing. If ten dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little
calculation would show that it