Let gentlemen also consider that we are not to be hurried away by our feelings or passions. We are sent here to attend to the business of the nation, and, to do that as it ought to be done, we must yield to a spirit of mutual deference and compromise, we must act fairly and impartially. All we ask in the present case is, to do as we would be done by. We permit the Eastern States to import German redemptioners and others. Let them then permit us to enjoy our constitutional right of importing slaves, especially when that right will exist but for a short time. We do not pretend to advocate the act, but the right of our State to pass this law. It is not to be inferred that we are friendly to the importation. I believe, on the contrary, every Representative of the State on this floor is hostile to it. But how can gentlemen expect that we will disregard the voice of our own State, and especially when the measure may have been dictated by good and substantial reasons. One good reason may be that the importation could not be prevented, and that the restraining law was extensively broken. This we know was the fact. If so, may it not have been sound policy in the State to repeal it? There may have been another reason for the measure. It may have been conceived to have been better to import slaves directly from Africa than to be indebted for them to New York and other States, in which they may have been surreptitiously introduced. The gentleman from New York (Mr. MITCHILL) observes that it is demonstrable that, even in a pecuniary point of view, slaves are an evil; and that they impoverish those who hold them. What does this show, but that in the North they kept slaves as long as their interest dictated, and then got rid of them; and that because it is a misfortune to have them, we must be punished for our poverty. Though young, I am happy to state that I have seen the evil decreasing in the State I have the honor to represent. Let us alone, and we will pursue the best means the nature of the case admits of. Interfere and you will only increase the evil; for, whenever the Government of the Union interferes in the peculiar concerns of a State, it must excite jealousy and a spirit of resistance.