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Were they to form a Union that should include only those States willing to consent to an immediate prohibition of the slave-trade, and thus leave the rest of the States out of that Union, and independent of its power to restrain the importation of slaves? Were they to abandon the hope of forming a new Constitution for the thirteen States that had gone together through all the conflicts and trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, or were they to form such a government, and secure to it the power at some early period of putting an end to this traffic? If they were to do the latter, if the cause of humanity demanded action upon this and all the other great objects dependent upon their decisions, — how could the commercial interests of the country be better used, than in the acquisition of a power to free its commerce from the stain and reproach of this inhuman traffic? By the arrangement which was to form one of the principal "compromises" of the Constitution, American commerce might achieve for itself the opportunity to do what no nation had yet done. By this arrangement, it might be implied in the fundamental law of the new government about to be created for the American people, that the abolition of the slave-trade was an object that ought to engage the attention of Christian states. Without it, the abolition of this trade could not be secured within any time or by any means capable of being foreseen or even conjectured.

That the framers of the Constitution judged wisely: that they acted upon motives which will enable

History to shield them from all reasonable reproach; and that they brought about a result alike honorable to themselves and to their country, will not be denied by those who remember and duly appreciate the fact, that the Congress of the United States, under the Constitution, was the first legislative body in the world to prohibit the carrying of slaves to the territories of foreign countries.1

It is no inconsiderable honor to the statesmen situated as General Pinckney and other representatives of the Southern States were, that they should have frankly yielded the prejudices, and what they supposed to be the interests, of their constituents, to the great object of forming a more perfect union. Certainly they could urge, with equal if not greater force and truth, the same arguments for the continuance of the slave-trade, which for nearly twenty years afterwards were continually heard in the British Parliament, and which postponed its abolition until long after the people of England had become satisfied both of its inhumanity and its impolicy. Whether General Pinckney was right or wrong in the opinion that his constituents needed no national regulation of commerce, there can be no doubt of his sincerity when he expressed it. Nor can there be any doubt that he was fully convinced of the fact, when he asserted that they would not adopt a

1 Denmark, it is said, abolished the foreign slave-trade and the importation into her colonies in 1792, but the prohibitions were not to

take effect until 1804. 1 Kent's Commentaries, 198, note (citing Mr. Wheaton).

constitution that should vest in the national government an immediate power to prohibit the importation of slaves. He made, therefore, a real concession, when he consented to the prohibition at the end of twenty years, and he made it in order that the union of the thirteen States might be preserved under a Constitution adequate to its wants.

For this, as well as for other services, he is entitled to a place of honor among the great men who framed the charter of our national liberties; and when we recollect that by his action he armed the national government with a power to free the American name from the disgrace of tolerating the slavetrade, before it was effectually put down by any other people in Christendom, we need not hesitate to rank him high among those who made great sacrifices for the general welfare of the country and the general good of mankind.1

1 In the first draft of the Constitution reported by the Committee of Detail, it was provided that the importation of such persons as the States might think proper to admit should not be prohibited. When the committee to arrange, if possible, certain compromises between the Northern and Southern States was raised, this provision, with other matters, was referred, and it was finally agreed that the importation should not be prohibited before the year 1808. After the adoption of the Constitution, Congress, by the acts of March 22d, 1794, and May 10,

1800, prohibited the citizens and residents of the United States from carrying slaves to any foreign territory for the purpose of traffic. By the act of March 2, 1807, the importation of slaves into the United States after January 1, 1808, was prohibited under severe penalties. In 1818 and 1819 these penalties were further increased, and in 1820, the offence was made piracy. Although the discussion of the subject commenced in England at about the same time (1788), it was nearly twenty years before a bill could be carried through Parliament for the abolition of

the traffic.

Through the whole

of that period, and down to the very last, counsel were repeatedly heard at the bar, in behalf of interested parties, to oppose the reform. The trade was finally abolished by act of Parliament in March, 1807; it was made a felony in 1810, and declared to be piracy in 1824. While, therefore, the representatives of a few of the Southern States of this Union refused to consent to an immediate prohibition, they did consent to engraft upon the Constitution what was in effect a declaration that the

trade should be prohibited at a fixed period of time; and the trade was thus abolished by the United States, under a government of limited powers, with respect to their own territories, as soon as it was abolished by the "omnipotent" Parliament of Great Britain. Moreover, by consenting to give to the Union the power to regulate commerce, the Southern States enabled Congress to abolish the slave-trade with foreign countries thirteen years before the same trade was made unlawful to British vessels.

CHAPTER XIV.

WILSON.

JAMES WILSON, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the early Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, was one of the first jurists in America during the latter part of the last century.

He was born in Scotland about the year 1742. After studying at Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh, he emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1766. He became, soon after his arrival, a tutor in the Philadelphia College, in which place he acquired great distinction as a classical scholar. He subsequently studied the law, and was admitted to the bar; and, after practising at different places, took up his residence at Philadelphia, where he continued to reside during the rest of his life.1

For six years out of the twelve that elapsed from 1775 to the summoning of the Convention of 1787, he was a member of Congress. Concerned in all the great measures of independence, the establishment of the Confederation, the peace, and the reve

1 Encyclopædia Americana, Art. "Wilson, James."

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