been reported by the committee of detail, to wit: "No
navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of the
members present in each house;" a proposition which the staple and
commercial States were solicitous to retain, lest their commerce
should be placed too much under the power of the Eastern States; but
which these last States were as anxious to reject. This committee, of
which also I had the honor to be a member, met and took under their
consideration the subjects committed to them. I found the _eastern_
States, notwithstanding their _aversion to slavery_, were very willing
to indulge the southern States, at least with a temporary liberty to
prosecute the _slave trade_, provided the southern states would in
their turn gratify them, by laying no restriction on navigation acts;
and after a very little time, the committee, by a great majority,
agreed on a report, by which the general government was to be
prohibited from preventing the importation of slaves for a limited
time, and the restricted clause relative to navigation acts was to be
omitted.

This report was adopted by a majority of the Convention, but not
without considerable opposition.

It was said, 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
freedom, who could not but approve our efforts to preserve the
_rights_ which he had thus imparted to his creatures; that now, when
we had scarcely risen from our knees, from supplicating his mercy 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 and prevent the slave trade,
even encouraging that most infamous traffic, by giving the States the
power and influence in the Union in proportion as they cruelly and
wantonly sported with the rights of their fellow-creatures, ought to
be considered as a solemn mockery of, and an 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