Scarcely a month after this repeal, Bard of Pennsylvania solemnly addressed Congress on the matter.  “For many reasons,” said he, “this House must have been justly surprised by a recent measure of one of the Southern States.  The impressions, however, which that measure gave my mind, were deep and painful.  Had I been informed that some formidable foreign Power had invaded our country, I would not, I ought not, be more alarmed than on hearing that South Carolina had repealed her law prohibiting the importation of slaves....  Our hands are tied, and we are obliged to stand confounded, while we see the flood-gate opened, and pouring incalculable miseries into our country."[51] He then moved, as the utmost legal measure, a tax of ten dollars per head on slaves imported.

Debate on this proposition did not occur until February 14, when Lowndes explained the circumstances of the repeal, and a long controversy took place.[52] Those in favor of the tax argued that the trade was wrong, and that the tax would serve as some slight check; the tax was not inequitable, for if a State did not wish to bear it she had only to prohibit the trade; the tax would add to the revenue, and be at the same time a moral protest against an unjust and dangerous traffic.  Against this it was argued that if the tax furnished a revenue it would defeat its own object, and make prohibition more difficult in 1808; it was inequitable, because it was aimed against one State, and would fall exclusively on agriculture; it would give national sanction to the trade; it would look “like an attempt in the General Government to correct a State for the undisputed exercise of its constitutional powers;” the revenue would be inconsiderable, and the United States had nothing to do with the moral principle; while a prohibitory tax would be defensible, a small tax like this would be useless as a protection and criminal as a revenue measure.

The whole debate hinged on the expediency of the measure, few defending South Carolina’s action.[53] Finally, a bill was ordered to be brought in, which was done on the 17th.[54] Another long debate took place, covering substantially the same ground.  It was several times hinted that if the matter were dropped South Carolina might again prohibit the trade.  This, and the vehement opposition, at last resulted in the postponement of the bill, and it was not heard from again during the session.

52. The Louisiana Slave-Trade, 1803-1805. About this time the cession of Louisiana brought before Congress the question of the status of slavery and the slave-trade in the Territories.  Twice or thrice before had the subject called for attention.  The first time was in the Congress of the Confederation, when, by the Ordinance of 1787,[55] both slavery and the slave-trade were excluded from the Northwest Territory.  In 1790 Congress had accepted the cession of North Carolina back lands on the express condition that slavery there be undisturbed.[56] Nothing had been