vidual most heartily have approved
of it, because even if the importation of slaves in fact rendered us
stronger, less vulnerable and more capable of defence, I should rejoice
in the prohibition of it, as putting an end to a trade which has already
continued too long for the honor and humanity of those concerned in it.
But as it was well known that South Carolina and Georgia thought a
further continuance of such importations useful to them, and would not
perhaps otherwise have agreed to the new constitution, those States
which had been importing till they were satisfied, could not with
decency have insisted upon their relinquishing advantages themselves had
already enjoyed. Our situation makes it necessary to bear the evil as it
is. It will be left to the future legislatures to allow such
importations or not. If any, in violation of their clear conviction of
the injustice of this trade, persist in pursuing it, this is a matter
between God and their own consciences. The interests of humanity will,
however, have gained something by the prohibition of this inhuman trade,
though at a distance of twenty odd years."[25]

"Centinel," representing the Quaker sentiment of Pennsylvania, attacked
the clause in his third letter, published in the _Independent Gazetteer,
or The Chronicle of Freedom_, November 8, 1787: "We are told that the
objects of this article are slaves, and that it is inserted to secure to
the southern states the right of introducing negroes for twenty-one
years to come, against the declared sense of the other states to put an
end to an odious traffic in the human species, which is especially
scandalous and inconsistent in a people, who have asserted their own
liberty by the sword, and which dangerously enfeebles the districts
wherein the laborers are bondsmen. The words, dark and ambiguous, such
as no plain man of common sense would have used, are evidently chosen to
conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of
slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations. When it is
recollected that no poll tax can be imposed on _five_ negroes, above
what _three_ whites shall be charged; when it is considered, that the
imposts on the consumption of Carolina field negroes must be trifling,
and the excise nothing, it is plain that the proportion of
contributions, which can be expected from the southern states under the
new constitution, will be unequal, and yet they are to be allowed to
e