"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alarmed than on hearing that South Carolina had repealed her law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.
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