d, who was a
member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society of New England. He was
about to withdraw from it for want of time to attend to its
duties,--had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,--when news came
of the doings of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation
was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for
Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery. Such is the
irony of coincidence in names.]

[Footnote 12: The subsequent legislation on this subject is a curious
exemplification of the ingenuity with which any law obnoxious to the
owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it could not be
defeated by force of numbers. In 1806 a final attempt was made to impose
the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and a resolution passed in
favor of it. This was referred to a committee, with instructions to
bring in a bill. A bill was reported and pushed so far as a third
reading, when it was recommitted, which put it off for a year. When it
next appeared it was a bill for the prohibition of the importation of
slaves, in accordance with the constitutional provision that the traffic
should cease in 1808. The new question, after some debate, in which
there was no allusion to the tax, was postponed for further
consideration. But it never again came before the House. A month later,
February 13, 1807, a bill from the Senate, providing that the foreign
slave trade should cease on the first day of the following January, was
received and immediately concurred in, and that seems to have been
silently accepted as disposing of the whole subject. No tax was ever
paid; but the importation of slaves, notwithstanding the law to put an
end to importation in 1808, continued at the rate, it was estimated, of
about fifteen thousand a year. Probably it never ceased altogether till
the beginning of the rebellion of 1860.]

CHAPTER XI

NATIONAL FINANCES--SLAVERY

Hamilton's famous report to the First Congress, as secretary of the
treasury, was made at the second session in January, 1790. Near the
close of the previous session a petition asking for some settlement of
the public debt was received and referred to a committee of which
Madison was chairman. The committee reported in favor of the petition,
and the House accordingly called upon the secretary to prepare a plan
"for the support of the public credit."

So far as Hamilton's funding scheme provided for that p