The second compromise referred to the slave trade, which was particularly defended by South Carolina and Georgia.  The raising of rice and indigo in those States caused an increasing death-rate among the slaves.  The slave trade, which brought many kidnapped slaves from Africa to those States was needed to replenish the number of slaves who died.  Virginia had not yet become an important breeding-place of slaves who were sold to planters farther south.  The members of the Convention who wished to put an end to this hideous traffic proposed that it should be prohibited, and that the enforcement of the prohibition should be assigned to the General Government.  Pinckney, however, keen to defend his privileged institution and the special interests of his State, bluntly informed the Convention that if they voted to abolish the slave trade, South Carolina would regard it as a polite way of telling her that she was not wanted in the new Union.  To think of attempting to form a Union without South Carolina amazed them all and made them pliable.  Although there was considerable opposition to giving the General Government control over shipping, this provision was passed.  The Northerners saw in it the germs of a tariff act which would benefit their manufacturers, and they agreed that the slave trade should not be interfered with before 1808 and that no export tax should be authorized.

The third compromise affected representation.  The Convention had already voted that the Congress should consist of two parts, a Senate and a House of Representatives.  By a really clever device each State sent two members to the Senate, thus equalizing the small and large States in that branch of the Government.  The House, on the other hand, represented the People, and the number of members elected from each State corresponded, therefore, to the population.

As I do not attempt to make even a summary of the details of the Convention, I should pass over many of the other topics which it considered, often with very heated discussion.  The fundamental problem was how to preserve the rights of the States and at the same time give the Central Government sufficient power.  By devices which actually worked, and for many years continued to work, this conflict was smoothed over, although sixty years later the question of State rights, intertwined with that of slavery, nearly split the Nation in the War of Secession.  There was much question as to the term for which the President should be elected and whether by the People or by Congress.  Some were for one, two, three, four, ten, and even fifteen years.  Rufus King, grown sarcastic, said:  “Better call it twenty—­it’s the average reign of princes.”  Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris stood for a life service with provision for the President’s removal in case of malfeasance.  These gentlemen, in spite of their influence in the Convention, stirred up a deep-seated enmity to their plan.  Few instincts were more general than that which drew back from any