We would not, however, represent that this question was debated by all the Northern members with such exclusively interested views as marked their treatment of the preceding one. Many of them were really alive to the horrors of a trade which the whole civilized world was beginning to look upon with detestation, and they protested vehemently against its toleration under a new and republican government. But South Carolina was by this time thoroughly versed in that omnipotent logic which has tied up so many Gordian knots from that time to this. “Religion and humanity,” said Rutledge, “have nothing to do with the question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.” “South Carolina,” said Cotesworth Pinckney, “can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade;” and “Georgia,” echoed Baldwin, “will never become a member of the Union, if forbidden to import slaves.” Ellsworth, from Connecticut, forthwith took the alarm--“was afraid of losing two States, while such others as might be disposed to stand aloof, would fly into a variety of shapes and directions, and most probably into several confederacies, not without bloodshed.” This singular imaginary spectacle of States _flying into a variety of shapes_, which has rambled through the brains of successive generations, till the genius of the last great compromiser exalted it into the sublime metaphor of erratic planets rushing madly from their spheres, of course settled the question at once, and the slave trade was tolerated till 1808, under the harmless euphemism of the migration and importation of such persons as any of the then existing States might think proper to admit. Whether the controversial resources of the Convention were by this time exhausted, or whether revolutionary sagacity failed to discover any new danger to the Union in a clause that in more modern times has proved a mine of most combustible perils; or whether, as is most likely, the members saw that the political interests of the two great sections were in no way staked upon the decision; certain it is, that when, late in the summer, Mr. Butler suggested the restoration of fugitives from labor as an amendment to the article providing for the delivering up of criminals, the only objection offered was that the two clauses seemed somewhat incongruous. The proposal was withdrawn for the moment and submitted a few days afterwards by the same gentleman and C. Pinckney. It was at once agreed to without debate. It is somewhat singular that so many complaints should have been made of the inadequacy of a provision thus expressly fashioned by the party it was intended to benefit, and which is in reality more stringent than the one which, had it not been for the Northern members, would originally have been adopted.