made pitiably weak by the prevailing jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking of burdens by states pledged to its financial support.  But populism and particularism brought their own cure.  The paralysis of government now enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system.  Exalted theorising on the principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old regime:  matter-of-fact reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new.  The plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the popular will to procure a general ratification.

Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but under local control.  At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it continued to lie in the several state governments.  The great convention at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all problems not regarded as essential in their main task.  Conscious ignorance by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the secrecy of the convention’s proceedings exempted it from any pressure of anti-slavery sentiment from outside.

On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was discredited.  Roger Sherman of Connecticut “observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it.”  His colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, “The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the states themselves”; and again, “Let us not intermeddle.  As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless.  Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country.”  And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts “thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it.”  The agreement was general that the convention keep its hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the institution itself.  These issues concerned the apportionment of representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of fugitives.  This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed in its phrasing to read:  “No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be