Mr. PINCKNEY.  South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade.  In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes.  If the States be all left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as Virginia and Maryland already have done.  Adjourned.—­pp. 1388-9.

WEDNESDAY, August 22, 1787.

In Convention,—­Article 7, Section 4, was resumed.

Mr. SHERMAN was for leaving the clause as it stands.  He disapproved of the slave trade; yet as the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves, as the public good did not require it to be taken from them, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of government, he thought it best to leave the matter as we find it.  He observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees complete it.  He urged on the Convention the necessity of despatching its business.

Col.  MASON.  This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants.  The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it.  The present question concerns not the importing States alone, but the whole Union.  The evil of having slaves was experienced during the late war.  Had slaves been treated as they might have been by the enemy, they would have proved dangerous instruments in their hands.  But their folly dealt by the slaves as it did by the tories.  He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the slaves in Greece and Sicily; and the instructions given by Cromwell to the commissioners sent to Virginia, to arm the servants and slaves, in case other means of obtaining its submission should fail.  Maryland and Virginia he said had already prohibited the importation of slaves expressly.  North Carolina had done the same in substance.  All this would be in vain, if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to import.  The Western people are already calling out for slaves for their new lands; and will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carolina and Georgia.  Slavery discourages arts and manufactures.  The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.  They prevent the emigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country.  They produce the most pernicious effect on manners.  Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.  They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country.  As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this.  By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.  He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic.  As to the States being in possession of the right to import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be properly given up.  He held it essential in every point of view, that the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery.