History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States Volume II Part 15

But there were few men in the Convention bold enough to hazard the consequences of unsettling an arrangement, which had cost so much labor and anxiety; which had been made as nearly correct in theory as the circ.u.mstances of the case would allow; and which was, in truth, the best practical solution of a great difficulty. Mr. Morris's motion received the vote of a single State only.[219] The great majority of the delegations considered it wiser to go on to the discussion of the proposed restrictions upon the revenue and commercial powers, in the hope that each of them might be considered and acted upon with reference to the true principles applicable to the subject, or that the whole might be adjusted by some agreement that would not disturb what had been settled with so much difficulty.

The great embarra.s.sment attending the proposed restriction upon the taxation of exports was, that, however the question might be decided, it would probably lose for the new government the support of some important members of the Convention. Those who regarded it as right that the government should have a complete revenue power, contended for the convenience with which a large staple production, in which America was not rivalled in foreign markets, could be made the subject of an export tax, that would in reality be paid by the foreign consumer. On the other side, the very facility with which such objects could be selected for taxation alarmed the States whose products presented the best opportunity for exercising this power. They did not deny the obvious truth, that the tax must ultimately fall on the consumer; but they considered it enough to surrender the power of levying duties upon imports, without giving up the control which each State now had over its own productions.[220]

But there was also another question involved in the form in which the proposed restriction had been presented. It prohibited the national government from taxing exports, but imposed no restraint in this respect upon the power of the States. If they were to retain the power over their own exports, they would have the same right to tax the products of other States exported through their maritime towns. This power had been used to a great extent, and always oppressively.

Virginia had taxed the tobacco of North Carolina; Pennsylvania had taxed the products of Maryland, of New Jersey, and of Delaware; and it was apparent, that every State, not possessed of convenient and accessible seaports, must hereafter submit to the same exactions, if this power were left unrestrained. Give it to the general government, said the advocates for a full revenue power, and the inconveniences attending its exercise by the separate States will be avoided. But those who were opposed to the possession of such a power by the general government, apprehended greater oppression by a majority of the States acting through the national legislature, than they could suffer at the hands of individual States. The eight Northern States, they said, had an interest different from the five Southern States, and in one branch of the legislature the former were to have thirty-six votes, and the latter twenty-nine.

From considerations like these, united with others which would render it nearly impracticable to select the objects of such taxation so as to make it operate equally, the restriction prevailed.[221] The revenue power was thus shorn of one great branch of taxation, which, however difficult it might be to practise it throughout such a country as this, is part of the prerogatives of every complete government, which was believed by many to be essential to the success of the proposed Const.i.tution, but which was resisted successfully by others, as oppressive to their local and peculiar interests.

Was the commercial power to experience a like diminution from the full proportions of a just authority over the external trade of the States?

Were the States, whose great h.o.m.ogeneous products, derived from the labor of slaves, would supply no revenue to the national treasury, to be left at liberty to import all the slaves that Africa could furnish?

Were the commercial States to see the carrying trade of the country--embracing the very exports thus exempted from burdens of every kind, and thus stimulated by new accessions of slaves--pa.s.s into foreign bottoms, and be unable to protect their interests by a majority of votes in the national legislature? Was there to be no advantageous commercial treaty obtained from any foreign power, unless the measures needful to compel it could gain the a.s.sent of two thirds of Congress? Was the North to be shut out for ever from the West India trade, and was it at the same time to see the traffic in slaves prosecuted without restraint, and without the prospect or the hope of a final termination?

These were grave and searching questions. The vote exempting exports from the revenue power could not be recalled. It had pa.s.sed by a decided majority of the States; and many suffrages had been given for the exemption, not from motives of a sectional nature, but on account of the difficulty that must attend the exercise of the power, and from the conviction that such taxation is incorrect in principle. So far, therefore, the Southern States had gained all that they desired in respect to the revenue power, and now three of them, with great firmness, declared that the question in relation to the commercial power was, whether they should or should not be parties to the Union.

If required to surrender their right to import slaves, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia would not accept the Const.i.tution, although they were willing to make slaves liable to an equal tax with other imports.[222] It was also manifest, that the clause which required a navigation act to be pa.s.sed by two thirds of each house, was to be insisted on by some, although not by all, of the Southern members.

Thus was a dark and gloomy prospect a second time presented to the framers of the Const.i.tution. If, on the one side, there were States feeling themselves bound as a cla.s.s to insist on certain concessions, on the other side were those by whom such concessions could not be made. The chief motive with the Eastern, and with most of the Northern States, in seeking a new union under a new frame of government, was a commercial one. They had suffered so severely from the effects of the commercial policy of England and other European nations, and from the incapacity of Congress to control that policy, that it had become indispensable to them to secure a national power which could dictate the terms and vehicles of commercial intercourse with the whole country. Cut off from the British West India trade by the English Orders in Council, the Eastern and Middle States required other means of counteracting those oppressive regulations than could be found in their separate State legislation, which furnished no power whatever for obtaining a single commercial treaty.[223] Besides these considerations, which related to the special interests of the commercial States, the want of a navy, which could only be built up by measures that would encourage the growth of the mercantile marine, and which, although needed for the protection of commerce, was also required for the defence of the whole country, made it necessary that the power to pa.s.s a navigation act should be burdened with no serious restrictions.

The idea of requiring a vote of two thirds in Congress for the pa.s.sage of a navigation act, founded on the a.s.sumed diversity of Northern and Southern, or the commercial and the planting interests, proceeded upon the necessity for a distinct protection of the latter against the former, by means of a special legislative check. To a certain extent, as I have already said, these interests, when regarded in their aggregates, offered a real diversity. But it did not follow that this peculiar check upon the power of a majority was either a necessary or an expedient mode of providing against oppressive legislation. In every system of popular government, there are great disadvantages in departing from the simple rule of a majority; and perhaps the principle which requires the a.s.sent of more than a majority ought never to be extended to mere matters of legislation, but should be confined to treaty stipulations, and to those fundamental changes which affect the nature of the government and involve the terms on which the different portions of society are a.s.sociated together.

It was undoubtedly the purpose of those who sought for this particular restriction, to qualify the nature of the government, in its relation to the interests of commerce. But the real question was, whether there existed any necessary reason for placing those interests upon a different footing from that of all other subjects of national legislation. The operation of the old rule of the Confederation, which required the a.s.sent of nine States in Congress to almost all the important measures of government, many of which involved no fundamental right of separate States, had revealed the inconveniences of lodging in the hands of a minority the power to obstruct just and necessary legislation. If, indeed, it was highly probable that the power, by being left with a majority, would be abused,--if the interests of the Eastern and Middle States were purely and wholly commercial, and would be likely so to shape the legislation of the country as to encourage the growth of its mercantile marine, at the expense of other forms of industry and enterprise, and no other suitable and efficient checks could be found,--then the restriction proposed might be proper and necessary.

But in truth the separate interests of the Eastern and Middle States, when closely viewed, were not in all respects the same. Connecticut and New Jersey were agricultural States. New York and Pennsylvania, although interested in maritime commerce, were destined to be great producers of the most important grains. Maryland, although a commercial, was also an agricultural State. The new States likely to be formed in the West would be almost wholly agricultural, and would have no more s.h.i.+pping than might be required to move the surplus products of their soil upon their great inland lakes towards the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic. All these States, existing and expectant, were interested to obtain commercial treaties with foreign countries; all needed the benefits of uniform commercial regulations; but they were not all equally interested in a high degree of encouragement to the growth of American s.h.i.+pping, by means of a stringent navigation act, that would bear heavily upon the Southern planter.

Not only was there a very considerable protection against the abuse of its power by a sectional majority, in these more minute diversities of interest, but there were also two very efficient legislative checks upon that power already introduced into the government. If an unjust and oppressive measure had commanded a majority in the House, it might be defeated in the Senate, or, if that check should fail, it might be arrested by the executive.

It had, nevertheless, been made part of the limitations upon the commercial power, embraced in the report of the committee of detail, that a navigation act should require a vote of two thirds of both branches of the legislature. The vote which adopted the prohibition against taxes on exports, taken on the 21st of August, was followed, on that day and the next, by an excited debate on the taxation of the slave-trade, in which the three States of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina made the limitation upon the power of the Union over this traffic the condition of their accepting the Const.i.tution. This debate was closed by the proposition of Gouverneur Morris, to refer the whole subject to a committee of one from each State, in order that the three matters of exports, the slave-trade, and a navigation act might form a bargain or compromise between the Northern and the Southern States.[224] But the prohibition against taxing exports had already been agreed to, and there remained to be committed only the proposed restriction against taxing or prohibiting the migration or importation of such persons as the States might see fit to admit, the restriction which required a capitation tax to conform to the census, and the proposed limitation upon the power to pa.s.s a navigation act.

Thus, in effect, the questions to come before this committee were, whether the slave-trade should be excepted from both the commercial and revenue powers of the general government, and whether the commercial power should be subjected to a restriction which required a vote of two thirds in dealing with the commercial interests of the Union.

We know very little of the deliberations of this committee; but as each State was equally represented in it, and as the position of the different sectional objects is quite clear, we can have no difficulty in forming an opinion as to the motives and purposes of the settlement which resulted from their action, or in obtaining a right estimate of the result itself.

In the first place, then, we are to remember the previous concessions already made by the Northern States, and the advantages resulting from them. These concessions were the representation of the slaves and the exemption of exports from taxation. If the slaves had not been included in the system of representation, the Northern States could have had no political motive for acquiring the power to put an end to the slave-trade. If the exports of their staple productions had not been withdrawn from the revenue power, the Southern States could have had no very strong or special motive to draw them into the new Union; but with such an exemption, they could derive benefits from the Const.i.tution as great as those likely to be enjoyed by their Northern confederates. Both parties, therefore, entered the final committee of compromise with a strong desire to complete the Union and to establish the new government. The Northern States wished for a full commercial power, including the slave-trade and navigation laws, to be dependent on the voices of a majority in Congress. The Southern States struggled to retain the right to import slaves, and to limit the enactment of navigation laws to a vote of two thirds. Both parties could be gratified only by conceding some portion of their respective demands.

If the Northern States could accept a future, instead of an immediate, prohibition of the slave-trade, they could gain ultimately a full commercial power over all subjects, to be exercised by a national majority. If the Southern States could confide in a national majority, so far as to clothe them with full ultimate power to regulate commerce, they could obtain the continuance of the slave-trade for a limited period.

Such was in reality the adjustment made and recommended by the committee. They proposed that the migration or importation of such persons as the several States then existing might think proper to admit, should not be prohibited by the national legislature before the year 1800, but that a tax or duty might be imposed on such persons, at a rate not exceeding the average of the duties laid on imports; that the clause relating to a capitation tax should remain; and that the provision requiring a navigation act to be pa.s.sed by a vote of two thirds, should be stricken out.[225]

No change was made in this arrangement, when it came before the Convention, except to subst.i.tute the year 1808 as the period at which the restriction on the commercial power was to terminate, and to provide for a specific tax on the importation of slaves, not exceeding ten dollars on each person.[226] The remaining features of this settlement, relating to a capitation tax and a navigation act, were sanctioned by a large majority of the States.[227]

Thus, by timely and well-considered concessions on each side, was the slave-trade brought immediately within the revenue power of the general government, and also, at the expiration of twenty years, within its power to regulate commerce. By the same means, the commercial power, without any other restriction than that relating to the temporary toleration of the importation of slaves, was vested in a national majority. This result at once placed the foreign slave-trade by American vessels or citizens within the control of the national legislature, and enabled Congress to forbid the carrying of slaves to foreign countries; and at the end of the year 1808, it brought the whole traffic within the reach of a national prohibition.[228]

Too high an estimate cannot well be formed, of the importance and value of this final settlement of conflicting sectional interests and demands. History has to thank the patriotism and liberality of the Northern States, for having acquired, for the government of the Union, by reasonable concessions, the power to terminate the African slave-trade. We know, from almost every day's experience since the founding of the government, that individual cupidity, which knows no geographical limits, which defies public opinion whether in the North or in the South, required and still requires the restraint and chastis.e.m.e.nt of national power. The separate authority of the States would have been wholly unequal to the suppression of the slave-trade: for even if they had all finally adopted the policy of a stringent prohibition, without a navy, and without treaties, they could never have contended against the bold artifice and desperate cunning of avarice, stimulated by the enormous gains which have always been reaped in this inhuman trade.

The just and candid voice of History has also to thank the Southern statesmen who consented to this arrangement, for having clothed a majority of the two houses of Congress with a full commercial power.

They felt, and truly felt, that this was a great concession. But they looked at what they had gained. They had gained the exemption of their staple productions from taxation as objects of foreign commerce; the enumeration of their slaves in the basis of Congressional representation; and the settlement of the slave-trade upon terms not offensive to State pride. They had also gained the Union, with its power to maintain an army and a navy,--with its power and duty to protect them against foreign invasion and domestic insurrection, and to secure their republican const.i.tutions. They looked, therefore, upon the grant of the power to regulate commerce by the ordinary modes of legislation, in its relations to the interests of a great empire, whose foundations ought to be laid broadly and deeply on the national welfare.[229] They saw that the Revolution had cost the Eastern States enormous sacrifices of commercial wealth, and that the weakness of the Confederation had destroyed the little remnant of their trade.[230]

They saw and admitted the necessity for an unrestrained control over the foreign commerce of the country, if it was ever to rise from the prostrate condition in which it had been placed by foreign powers.

They acted accordingly; and by their action, they enabled the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to enter the new Union without humiliation and without loss.[231]

Thus was accomplished, so far as depended on the action of this Convention, that memorable compromise, which gave to the Union its control over the commercial relations of the States with foreign nations and with each other. An event so fraught with consequences of the utmost importance cannot be dismissed without some of the reflections appropriate to its consideration.

Nature had marked America for a great commercial nation. The sweep of the Atlantic coast, from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Florida, comprehending twenty degrees of lat.i.tude, broken into capacious bays and convenient harbors, and receiving the inward flow of the sea into great navigable rivers that stretched far into the interior, presented an access to the ocean not surpa.s.sed by that of any large portion of the globe. This long range of sea-coast embraced all the varieties of climate that are found between a hard and sterile region, where summer is but the breath of a few fervid weeks, and the ever blooming tropics, where winter is unknown. The products of the different regions, already entering, or fit to enter, into foreign commerce, attested as great a variety of soils. The proximity of the country to the West Indies, where the Eastern and the Middle States could find the best markets for some of their most important exports, afforded the promise of a highly lucrative trade; while the voyage to the East Indies from any American port could be performed in as short a time as from England or Holland or France. In the South, there were great staples already largely demanded by the consumption of Europe. In the North, there were fisheries of singular importance, capable of furnis.h.i.+ng enormous additions to the wealth of the country. Beyond the Alleghanies, the West, with its vast internal waters and its almost unequalled fertility, had been opened to a rapid emigration, which was soon to lay the foundation of new States, destined to be the abodes of millions of men.

The very variety and extent of these interests had for many years occasioned a struggle for some mode of reconciling and harmonizing them all. But divided into separate governments, the commercial legislation of the States could produce nothing but the confusion and uncertainty which retaliation necessarily engenders. Different systems and rates of revenue were in force in seaports not a hundred miles apart, through which the inhabitants of other jurisdictions were obliged to draw their supplies of foreign commodities, and to export their own productions. The paper-money systems of the several States made the commercial value of coin quite different in different places, and gave an entirely insecure basis to trade.

The reader, who has followed me through the preceding volume, has seen how the people of the United States, from the earliest stages of the Revolution, struggled to free themselves from these embarra.s.sments;--how they commenced with a jealous reservation of State authority over all matters of commerce and revenue; how they undertook to supply the necessities of a central government by contributions which they had not the power to make good, because their commercial condition did not admit of heavy taxation; how they endeavored to pa.s.s from this system to a grant of temporary revenues and temporary commercial regulation, to be vested in the federal Union; how they found it impracticable to agree upon the principles and details of a temporary power; how they turned to separate commercial leagues, each with its immediate neighbors, and were disappointed in the result or frustrated in the effort; and how at last they came to the conception of a full and irrevocable surrender of commercial and fiscal regulations to a central legislature, that could grasp the interests of the whole country and combine them in one harmonious system.

The influence of the commercial and revenue powers, thus obtained by the general government, on the condition of this country, has far exceeded the most sanguine hopes which the framers of the Const.i.tution could have indulged. No one can doubt that the people of America owe to it both the nature and the degree of their actual prosperity;--and as the national prosperity has given them importance in the world, it is just and accurate to say, that commerce and its effects have elevated republican inst.i.tutions to a dignity and influence which they have attained through no other of the forms or the spirit of society.

Let the reader consider the interests of commerce, in their widest relations with all that they comprehend,--the interests of the merchant, the artisan, and the tiller of the soil being alike involved,--as the chief purpose of the new government given to this Union; let him contemplate this as the central object around which are arranged almost all the great provisions of the Const.i.tution of the United States;--and he will see in it a wonderfully harmonious and powerful system, created for the security of property, and the promotion of the material welfare and prosperity of individuals, whatever their occupation, employment, or condition. That such a code of civil government should have sprung from the necessities of commerce, is surely one of the triumphs of modern civilization.

It is not to be denied, that the sedulous care with which this great provision was made for the general prosperity has had the effect of impressing on the national character a strong spirit of acquisition.

The character of a people, however, is to be judged not merely by the pursuit or the possession of wealth, but chiefly by the use which they make of it. If the inhabitants of the United States can justly claim distinction for the benevolent virtues; if the wealth that is eagerly sought and rapidly acquired is freely used for the relief of human suffering; if learning, science, and the arts are duly cultivated; if popular education is an object of lavish expenditure; if the inst.i.tutions of religion, though depending on a purely voluntary support, are provided for liberally, and from conscientious motives;--then is the national spirit of acquisition not without fruits, of which it has no need to be ashamed.

The objection, that the Const.i.tution of the United States, and the immense prosperity which has flowed from it, were obtained by certain concessions in favor of the inst.i.tution of slavery, results from a merely superficial view of the subject. If we would form a right estimate of the gain or loss to human nature effected by any given political arrangement, we must take into consideration the antecedent facts, and endeavor to judge whether a better result could have been obtained by a different mode of dealing with them. We shall then be able to appreciate the positive good that has been gained, or the positive loss that has been suffered.

The prominent facts to be considered in this connection are, in the first place, that slavery existed, and would long exist, in certain of the States; and that the condition of the African race in those States was universally regarded as a matter of purely local concern. It could not in fact have been otherwise; for there were slaves in every State excepting Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hamps.h.i.+re; and among the other States in which measures had been, or were likely to be, taken for the removal of slavery, there was a great variety of circ.u.mstances affecting the time and mode in which it should be finally extinguished. As soon as the point was settled, in the formation of the Const.i.tution of the United States, that the State governments were to be preserved, with all their powers unimpaired which were not required by the objects of the national government to be surrendered to the Union, the domestic relations of their inhabitants with each other necessarily remained under their exclusive control. Those relations were not involved in the purposes of the Federal Union.

So soon, also, as this was perceived and admitted, it became a necessary consequence of the admission, that the national authority should guarantee to the people of each State the right to shape and modify their own social inst.i.tutions; for without this principle laid at the foundation of the Union, there could be no peace or security for such a mixed system of government.

In the second place, we have to consider the fact, that, among the political rights of the States anterior to the national Const.i.tution, was the right to admit or to prohibit the further importation of slaves;--a traffic not then forbidden by any European nation to its Colonies, but which had been interdicted by ten of the American States. The transfer of this right to the Federal Union was a purely voluntary act; it was not strictly necessary for the purposes for which it was proposed to establish the Const.i.tution of the United States; although there were political reasons for which a part of the States might wish to acquire control over this subject, as well as moral reasons why all the States should have desired to vest that control in the general government. Three of the States, however, as we have seen, took a different view of their interest and duty, and declined to enter the new Union unless this traffic should be excepted from the power over commerce for a period of twenty years.

It is quite plain, that, if these facts had been met and dealt with in a manner different from the settlement that was actually made, one of two consequences must have ensued;--either no Const.i.tution at all could have been adopted, or there would have been a Union of some kind, from which three at least of the States must have been excluded.

If the first, by far the most probable contingency, had happened, a great feebleness and poverty of society must have continued to be the lot of all these States; there must have been perpetual collisions and rival confederacies; there certainly would have been an indefinite continuance of the slave-trade, accompanied and followed by a great external pressure upon the States which permitted it, which would have led to a war of races, or to a frightful oppression of the slaves.

Most of these evils would have followed the establishment of a partial confederacy.

On the other hand, we are to consider what has been gained to humanity by the establishment of the Const.i.tution. The extinction of the slave-trade, followed by a public opinion with reference to it that is as strong and reliable in the Southern as in the Northern States, was purchased at a price by no means unreasonable, when compared with the magnitude of the acquisition. The great prosperity and high civilization which are due to the commercial power of the Const.i.tution have been a vast benefit to both races;--to the whites by the superior refinement they have created, and to the blacks by the gradual but certain amelioration of their condition. The social strength and security occasioned by constantly increasing wealth, combined with the acknowledgment and establishment of the doctrine which makes every State the uncontrolled arbiter of the domestic condition of its inhabitants, has put it in the power of those who have charge of the negro to deal prudently and wisely with their great problem, without the interference of those who could benefit neither race by their intervention. This, in every rational view of the subject, cannot but be regarded as one of the chief blessings conferred by the Const.i.tution of the United States.

It has made emanc.i.p.ation possible, where otherwise it would have been impossible, or where it could have been obtained only through the horrors of both servile and civil war. It has enabled local authorities to adapt changes to local circ.u.mstances. Its beneficent influences may be traced in the laws of the States, in the records of their jurisprudence, and in the advanced and advancing condition of their public sentiment; and he who should follow those influences in all their details, and count the sum of what it has effected for the moral and physical well-being of the subjected race, would find cause for devout grat.i.tude to the Ruler of the Universe. Great as has been the increase of slaves in the United States during the last seventy years, there can be no question that the general improvement of their condition has been equally great, and that it has kept pace with the increasing prosperity of the country. That prosperity has enabled individual enterprise and benevolence to plant a colony upon the coast of Africa, which, after centuries of discipline and education, may yet be the means of restoring to its native soil, as civilized and Christian men, a race that came to us as heathens and barbarians.

Surely, then, with such results to look back upon, with such hopes in the future, the patriot and the Christian can have no real cause for regret or complaint, that in a system of representative government, made necessary by controlling circ.u.mstances, the unimportant anomaly should be found, of a representation of men without political rights or social privileges; or that the question of emanc.i.p.ation, either for the ma.s.s or the individual, should be carefully secured to local authority; or even that the slave-trade should have been prosecuted for a few years, to be extinguished by America first of all the nations of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[211] See Madison, Elliot, V. 302, 357.

[212] See the remarks of Gouverneur Morris in the debate on the apportionment of representatives, in which he stated the dilemma precisely in this way. Elliot, V. 301.

[213] No candid man, said Rufus King, could undertake to justify to them a system under which slaves were to continue to be imported, and to be represented, while the exports produced by their labor were not to pay any part of the expenses of the government which would be obliged to defend their masters against domestic insurrections or foreign attacks. Elliot, V. 391.

[214] See the remarks of Mr. Ellsworth and General Pinckney, as reported by Mr. Madison, Elliot, V. 458, 459.

[215] They were Messrs. Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham, Ellsworth, and Wilson. I have cla.s.sed Mr. Ellsworth among the representatives of non-slaveholding States; for although there were between two and three thousand slaves in Connecticut at this time, provision had already been made for its prospective and gradual abolition. It was not finally extinct in that State until after the year 1840. The United States census for 1790 returned 2,759 slaves for Connecticut; the census for 1840 returned 17; in the census for 1850 none were returned. A like gradual abolition took place in New Hamps.h.i.+re, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania. In Ma.s.sachusetts, slavery was abolished by the State Const.i.tution of 1780.

[216] See the remarks of Mr. Madison, Elliot, V. 490.

[217] Madison, Elliot, V. 391, 392.

[218] Ibid. 392, 393.

[219] New Jersey.