37. Reception of the Clause by the Nation. When the proposed Constitution was before the country, the slave-trade article came in for no small amount of condemnation and apology.  In the pamphlets of the day it was much discussed.  One of the points in Mason’s “Letter of Objections” was that “the general legislature is restrained from prohibiting the further importation of slaves for twenty odd years, though such importations render the United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of defence."[24] To this Iredell replied, through the columns of the State Gazette of North Carolina:  “If all the States had been willing to adopt this regulation [i.e., to prohibit the slave-trade], I should as an individual most heartily have approved of it, because even if the importation of slaves in fact rendered us stronger, less vulnerable and more capable of defence, I should rejoice in the prohibition of it, as putting an end to a trade which has already continued too long for the honor and humanity of those concerned in it.  But as it was well known that South Carolina and Georgia thought a further continuance of such importations useful to them, and would not perhaps otherwise have agreed to the new constitution, those States which had been importing till they were satisfied, could not with decency have insisted upon their relinquishing advantages themselves had already enjoyed.  Our situation makes it necessary to bear the evil as it is.  It will be left to the future legislatures to allow such importations or not.  If any, in violation of their clear conviction of the injustice of this trade, persist in pursuing it, this is a matter between God and their own consciences.  The interests of humanity will, however, have gained something by the prohibition of this inhuman trade, though at a distance of twenty odd years."[25]

“Centinel,” representing the Quaker sentiment of Pennsylvania, attacked the clause in his third letter, published in the Independent Gazetteer, or The Chronicle of Freedom, November 8, 1787:  “We are told that the objects of this article are slaves, and that it is inserted to secure to the southern states the right of introducing negroes for twenty-one years to come, against the declared sense of the other states to put an end to an odious traffic in the human species, which is especially scandalous and inconsistent in a people, who have asserted their own liberty by the sword, and which dangerously enfeebles the districts wherein the laborers are bondsmen.  The words, dark and ambiguous, such as no plain man of common sense would have used, are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.  When it is recollected that no poll tax can be imposed on five negroes, above what three whites shall be charged; when it is considered, that the imposts on the consumption of Carolina field negroes must be trifling, and the excise nothing, it is plain that the proportion of contributions, which can be expected from the southern states under the new constitution, will be unequal, and yet they are to be allowed to enfeeble themselves by the further importation of negroes till the year 1808.  Has not the concurrence of the five southern states (in the convention) to the new system, been purchased too dearly by the rest?"[26]