This famous debate, the parent of a countless offspring, resulted in a compromise, recommended as “the most conciliatory, and the best adapted to the present situation of things.” It consisted in carefully striking out of the report every clause to which any body could frame a serious objection, and entering the rest on the Journal without taking any final action on it. The report as entered, asserted the power of Congress to regulate the slave-trade, so far as to secure the humane treatment of the slaves during their passage, to prohibit foreigners from fitting out slave ships in our ports, and our citizens from supplying foreign States with this commodity; but disclaiming all right to interfere further before 1808, or to exercise any authority in the emancipation of slaves already in bondage, or in the amelioration of their condition. No intimation was made as to how they might choose to exercise the powers thus claimed. The influence which this result has had upon all after times, singularly confirms a prediction made by Scott, in the course of the speech already referred to--“that what was said, and more particularly what was done in Congress, at that time, would in some degree form the political character of America on the subject of slavery.” In fact, congressional legislation has never departed from the standard here established. All attempts to make this really a national question, have been uniformly employed for the mere purposes of temporary agitation, and have as uniformly ended in a compromise between a doubting majority and a resolute and unflinching minority. A question of much more practical importance at the present day, and on which it would be extremely interesting to know the views expressed by the sages who watched over the infancy of the Republic, must have arisen in the House shortly afterwards. North Carolina had ceded a portion of her enormous but unsettled territory to the General Government, on the express condition, however, that Congress should do nothing towards emancipating the slaves already to be found there. No report, however, of the debate upon the bill has been preserved. For some time after this, all agitation of the subject was carefully avoided. Petitions were occasionally received from Abolition Societies in New York and Pennsylvania, praying Congress to put to some practical use the powers which, by the report entered on the Journal of the House, they had declared themselves possessed of. Some were referred to committees which never reported, others suffered to sleep quietly on the table of the House, and one from Warner Mifflin, a well-known Delaware Friend, escaped the obscurity in which its fellows were forgotten, only to be returned to him with an abusive speech from North Carolina, which nobody thought it worth while to answer.