“It was said that 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 has 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 scarcely had risen from our knees, from supplicating his aid 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 power and influence in the Union in proportion as they cruelly and wantonly sport with the rights of their fellow-creatures, ought to be considered as a solemn mockery of, and 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 of liberty in the world.  It was said it ought to be considered that national crimes can only be and frequently are, punished in this world by national punishments, and that the continuance of the slave trade, and thus giving it a national sanction, and encouragement, ought to be considered as justly exposing us to the displeasure and vengeance of Him who is equally Lord of all, and who views with equal eye the poor African slave and his American master![10]

[Footnote 10:  How terribly and justly has this guilty nation been scourged, since these words were spoken, on account of slavery and the slave trade!]

“It was urged that, by this system, we were giving the general government full and absolute power to regulate commerce, under which general power it would have a right to restrain, or totally prohibit, the slave trade:  it must, therefore, appear to the world absurd and disgraceful to the last degree that we should except from the exercise of that power the only branch of commerce which is unjustifiable in its nature, and contrary to the rights of mankind.  That, on the contrary, we ought rather to prohibit expressly, in our Constitution, the further importation of slaves, and to authorize the general government, from time to time, to make such regulations as should be thought most advantageous for the gradual abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of the slaves which are already in the States.  That slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression.  It was further urged that, by this system of government,