Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/293

.] other states would keep their present position. Gentlemen should carry their views into futurity, and not confine themselves to the narrow limits of a day, when contemplating a subject of such vast importance. The gentleman had complained of the inequality of the taxes between the Northern and Southern States; that ten dollars a head was imposed on the importation of negroes; and that those negroes were afterwards taxed. To this it was answered, that the ten dollars per head was an equivalent to the five per cent. on imported articles; and as to their being afterwards taxed, the advantage is on our side, or, at least, not against us.

In the Northern States the labor is performed by white people, in the Southern by black. All the free people (and there are few others) in the Northern States are to be taxed by the new Constitution; whereas only the free people, and two fifths of the slaves, in the Southern States, are to be rated, in the apportioning of taxes. But the principal objection is, that no duties are laid on shipping; that, in fact, the carrying trade was to be vested, in a great measure, in the Americans; that the ship-building business was principally carried on in the Northern States. When this subject is duly considered, the Southern States should be the last to object to it. Mr. Rutledge then went into a consideration of the subject; after which the house adjourned.

, January 17, 1788.

Gen. CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY observed, that the honorable gentleman (Mr. Lowndes) who opposed the new Constitution had asserted that treaties made under the old Confederation were not deemed paramount to the laws of the land, and that treaties made by the king of Great Britain required the ratification of Parliament to render them valid. The honorable gentleman is surely mistaken in his assertion. His honorable friend (Chancellor Rutledge) had clearly shown that, by the 6th, 9th, and 13th Articles of the old Confederation, Congress have a power to make treaties, and each state is pledged to observe them; and it appears, from the debates of the English Parliament, that the House of Commons did not ratify, but actually censure, the peace made by the king of Great Britain with America; yet the very members who censured it acknowledged it was binding on the nation. [Here the general