Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/444

 the house would be cautious how they adopted this language, how they destroyed that constitution which had been so happily established."

Smith, of South Carolina, wished to see an end of this disagreeable business, and had determined to say nothing more on the subject, because he lamented the waste of time already occasioned by it, and the ill humor it had produced among gentlemen heretofore accustomed to treat each other with politeness. But the observations made by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Scott) required some answer. He agreed that congress had no greater right to levy a duty of ten dollars on slaves imported than on freemen, for the constitution made no difference. It spoke of migration as well as importation. But this remark he could not reconcile with another made by the gentleman, that, as congress had power to regulate trade, they might, therefore, regulate the trade in slaves; for, if there was nothing in the constitution which held out the idea of slavery, how could these Africans be viewed in a light different from any other class of beings?

"But the gentleman had insisted that congress might prohibit the importation of any species of persons of an inadmissible quality; as, for instance, persons affected with a pestilential disorder; and, as slavery was as bad as the plague, they might interdict the importation of slaves. The argument was new and ingenious, and, if well founded, would go much further; for, if congress could interdict the bringing of a plague into the country, they had equal authority to drive a plague out of it; and as the Quaker memorialists had been a great plague to them, and as sore a plague to the southern states as any whatever, these Quakers, under this power, might be exterminated.

"The respectable name of Dr. Franklin had been mentioned as giving countenance to these memorials, one of which was signed by him as president of the abolition society. It was astonishing to see that gentleman's name to an application which called upon congress, in explicit terms, to break a solemn compact to which he had himself been a party. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Gerry) had declared that it was the opinion of the select committee, of which he was a member, that the memorial from the Pennsylvania society asked congress to violate the constitution. And it was no less astonishing that Dr. Franklin had taken the lead in a business which looked so much like a persecution of the southern inhabitants, especially when he recollected the parable the doctor had written some time ago with a view to show the impropriety of one set of men persecuting others for a difference of opinion."

Boudinot "agreed to the general doctrines of Scott, but could not go so far as to say that the clause in the constitution relating to the importation or migration of such persons as the states now existing shall think proper to admit, did not include the case of negro slaves. Candor required him to acknowledge that this was the express design of the constitution. He had been informed that the tax or duty of ten dollars was agreed to instead of five per cent, ad valorem, and that it was so expressly understood by all parties in the convention. It was, therefore, the interest and duty of congress to impose the tax, or it would not be doing justice to the states or equalizing the duties