Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/36

24 Carolina and Georgia, referred to the slave-trade with, horror. Mr Gerry, of Massachusetts, declared in the Convention, that it was "as humiliating to enter into compact with the slaves of the Southern States, as with the horses and mules of the North." It was contended, that if slaves were men, then they should be taxed as men, and have their vote as men; if mere property, they should not entitle their owners to a vote, more than other property. It might be proper to tax slaves, "because it had a tendency to discourage slavery, but to take them into account in giving representatives tended to encourage the slave-trade, and to make it the interest of the States to continue that infamous traffic." It was said, that " we had just assumed a place among independent nations, in consequence of our opposition to the attempts of Great Britain to enslave us; that this opposition was grounded upon the preservation of those rights to which God and Nature had entitled us, not in particular, but in common with all the rest of mankind. That we had appealed to the Supreme Being for his assistance, as the God of heaven, who could not but approve our efforts to preserve the rights which he had imparted to his creatures; that now, when we had scarcely risen from our knees from supplicating his aid and protection in forming our government over a free people,—a government formed pretendedly on the principles of liberty, and for its preservation, — in that government to have a provision, not only putting it out of its power to restrain or prevent the slave-trade, even encouraging that most infamous traffic, and giving States power and influence in the Union in proportion as they cruelly and wantonly sport with the rights of their fellow- creatures,—ought to be considered as a solemn mockery of, and insult to, that God, whose protection we had then implored, and could not fail to hold us up in detestation, and render us contemptible to every true friend of liberty in the world. Luther Martin, the attorney-general of Maryland, thought it "inconsistent with the principles of the revolution, and dishonourable to the American character," to have the importation of slaves allowed by the Constitution. The Northern States, and some of the Southern, wished to abolish the slave-trade at once. Mr Pinckney, of South Carolina, thought that State "would never accede to the