34. The Special Committee and the “Bargain." Since the debate had, in the first place, arisen from a proposition to tax the importation of slaves, the yielding of this point by the South was the first move toward compromise.  To all but the doctrinaires, who shrank from taxing men as property, the argument that the failure to tax slaves was equivalent to a bounty, was conclusive.  With this point settled, Randolph voiced the general sentiment, when he declared that he “was for committing, in order that some middle ground might, if possible, be found.”  Finally, Gouverneur Morris discovered the “middle ground,” in his suggestion that the whole subject be committed, “including the clauses relating to taxes on exports and to a navigation act.  These things,” said he, “may form a bargain among the Northern and Southern States.”  This was quickly assented to; and sections four and five, on slave-trade and capitation tax, were committed by a vote of 7 to 3,[11] and section six, on navigation acts, by a vote of 9 to 2.[12] All three clauses were referred to the following committee:  Langdon of New Hampshire, King of Massachusetts, Johnson of Connecticut, Livingston of New Jersey, Clymer of Pennsylvania, Dickinson of Delaware, Martin of Maryland, Madison of Virginia, Williamson of North Carolina, General Pinckney of South Carolina, and Baldwin of Georgia.

The fullest account of the proceedings of this committee is given in Luther Martin’s letter to his constituents, and is confirmed in its main particulars by similar reports of other delegates.  Martin writes:  “A committee of one member from each state was chosen by ballot, to take this part of the system under their consideration, and to endeavor to agree upon some report which should reconcile those states [i.e., South Carolina and Georgia].  To this committee also was referred the following proposition, which had been reported by the committee of detail, viz.:  ’No navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two thirds of the members present in each house’—­a proposition which the staple and commercial states were solicitous to retain, lest their commerce should be placed too much under the power of the Eastern States, but which these last States were as anxious to reject.  This committee—­of which also I had the honor to be a member—­met, and took under their consideration the subjects committed to them.  I found the Eastern States, notwithstanding their aversion to slavery, were very willing to indulge the Southern States at least with a temporary liberty to prosecute the slave trade, provided the Southern States would, in their turn, gratify them, by laying no restriction on navigation acts; and after a very little time, the committee, by a great majority, agreed on a report, by which the general government was to be prohibited from preventing the importation of slaves for a limited time, and the restrictive clause relative to navigation acts was to be omitted."[13]