Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/440

 which he was supported by Baldwin, apparently on the ground that the resolution did not fairly express the sense of the constitution. Hartley took this occasion to defend the committee against some strictures of Burke's; but Burke still insisted that every clause in the report was drawn in ambiguous words, so as to involve in some measure such an interpretation as the Quakers wished. He acquitted the committee of any bad intention; yet he could not but think that, throughout the whole business, the southern members had been very hardly dealt by. The demand of the Quakers, as iniquitous as it was impolitic, had been referred to a committee. The southern members dragged, as it were, in spite of their remonstrances, to the bar of the house, had been set to defend their reputation and property against the Quakers, for whose right to offer such petitions gentlemen had strenuously contended. He hoped not to be out of order in offering another remark. The southern states were able to defend, and he hoped would defend, their property. No doubt those states would pass laws punishing as incendiaries any Quakers or others who should be found exciting their domestics to conspiracies or inusurrections.

Page, of Virginia, was in favor of the ten dollar duty, not only as a propel regulation of commerce, but to show that congress, as far as lies in their power, were disposed to discourage a shameful traffic. He was willing, however, to strike out the resolution, and that for two reasons. Without any such resolution, congress would still have the power to lay the tax. Should the power be asserted, and then the tax not be laid, it would look too much like temporizing, like seeming to yield to the demand of the Quakers, while in heart the house was still as much against it as those by whom the Quakers and their memorial had been so heartily abused.

Smith, of South Carolina, believed that the committee had been desirous so to frame this report as to please all parties. Some clauses were meant to allay the fears of the southern members, others were calculated to gratify the memorialists. The clause now under consideration seemed to be intended for that purpose; yet he was persuaded it would not be agreeable to the Quakers. Their nice feelings would not be gratified by a tax of this kind, the imposition of which would make slaves an article of commerce. He and his colleagues had been censured for making this business so serious. But was it reasonable to require them to give up the right fo be heard? Had the southern members been silent on this occasion, and not expressed themselves as they had done, they would have betrayed the charge intrusted to them.

On the question of striking out the fourth resolution, the committee was equally divided, but the motion was carried by the casting vote of Benson, the chairman.

The fifth resolution, affirming the power of congress to regulate the slave-trade, was vehemently opposed by Jackson, Tucker, and Smith, as was also a modification of it offered by Madison. It was said that, under pretense of regulating the trade, congress might, in fact, prohibit it entirely. They might insist, for instance, on such expensive accommodations and such costly provisions as would deter merchants from engaging in it. They might prohibit