rles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and others
that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon in
the hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing the
stay-law in retaliation.[11] At the end of the year the prohibitory act
had its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation acts
adopted every two or three years thereafter extended the regime until the
end of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the
judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judges
unanimously pronounced it valid.[12]

[Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.]

[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.]

But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings. The governor
in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions to
enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and the
frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of
the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to
pay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of
Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to
pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he
dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves
as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13]
Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the
solution to the legislature.

[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.]

In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a
statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe
that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slave
prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period
of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. The
governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to
bringing the system of exclusion to an end.

[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.]

However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in the Senate
to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this on
the ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected in
consequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that the
i