t_ for 1903, pp. 459,
460.]

[Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_
(London, 1799), p. 605.]

In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian motive was
obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often in
the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance toward
negroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributing
influence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion.
At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of
positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southern
considerations against the trade were that its continuance would lower the
prices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices from
rising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil the
world's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep the
community in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroes
already on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in the
population it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The
several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas.
In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going
comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the
settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where
prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything
calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to
sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry
were tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed.

The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be
gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the
lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor
on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee
of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a
vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting
slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since the
peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves
had been imported, which at L50 each would be trifling as a cause of the
existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to
relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pin