not our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic?  There would not be a slave the more sold, but we should derive the benefits by importing from Africa as well as that nation.”  Waln, in reply, contended that they should look into “the slave trade, much of which was still carrying on from Rhode Island, Boston and Pennsylvania.”  Hill of North Carolina called the House back from this general discussion to the petition in question, and, while willing to remedy any existing defect in the Act of 1794, hoped the petition would not be received.  Dana of Connecticut declared that the paper “contained nothing but a farrago of the French metaphysics of liberty and equality;” and that “it was likely to produce some of the dreadful scenes of St. Domingo.”  The next day Rutledge again warned the House against even discussing the matter, as “very serious, nay, dreadful effects, must be the inevitable consequence.”  He held up the most lurid pictures of the fatuity of the French Convention in listening to the overtures of the “three emissaries from St. Domingo,” and thus yielding “one of the finest islands in the world” to “scenes which had never been practised since the destruction of Carthage.”  “But, sir,” he continued, “we have lived to see these dreadful scenes.  These horrid effects have succeeded what was conceived once to be trifling.  Most important consequences may be the result, although gentlemen little apprehend it.  But we know the situation of things there, although they do not, and knowing we deprecate it.  There have been emissaries amongst us in the Southern States; they have begun their war upon us; an actual organization has commenced; we have had them meeting in their club rooms, and debating on that subject....  Sir, I do believe that persons have been sent from France to feel the pulse of this country, to know whether these [i.e., the Negroes] are the proper engines to make use of:  these people have been talked to; they have been tampered with, and this is going on.”

Finally, after censuring certain parts of this Negro petition, Congress committed the part on the slave-trade to the committee already appointed.  Meantime, the Senate sent down a bill to amend the Act of 1794, and the House took this bill under consideration.[40] Prolonged debate ensued.  Brown of Rhode Island again made a most elaborate plea for throwing open the foreign slave-trade.  Negroes, he said, bettered their condition by being enslaved, and thus it was morally wrong and commercially indefensible to impose “a heavy fine and imprisonment ... for carrying on a trade so advantageous;” or, if the trade must be stopped, then equalize the matter and abolish slavery too.  Nichols of Virginia thought that surely the gentlemen would not advise the importation of more Negroes; for while it “was a fact, to be sure,” that they would thus improve their condition, “would it be policy so to do?” Bayard of Delaware said that “a more dishonorable item of revenue” than that derived from the