On the reception of the report of the committee of detail, and when the article relating to representation was reached, the consequences of agreeing that the slaves should be computed in the rule, taken in connection with an unrestrained power in the States to increase the slave populations by further importation, and with the exemption of exports from taxation, became more prominent, and more likely to produce serious dissatisfaction. The concession of the slave representation had been made by some of the Northern members, in the hope that it might be the means of strengthening the plan of government, and of procuring for it full powers both of revenue and of commercial regulation. But now, it appeared that, as to two very important points, the hands of the national legislature were to be absolutely tied. The importation of slaves could not be prohibited; exports could not be taxed. These restrictions seemed to many to have an inevitable tendency to defeat the great primary purposes of a national government. All must agree, that defence against foreign invasion and against internal sedition was one of the principal objects for which such a government was to be established. Were all the States then to be bound to defend each, and was each to be at liberty to introduce a weakness which would increase both its own and the general danger, and at the same time to withhold the compensation for the burden? If slaves were to be imported, why should not the exports produced by their labor supply a revenue, that would enable the general government to defend their masters? To refuse it, was so inequitable and unreasonable, said Rufus King, that he could not assent to the representation of the slaves, unless exports should be taxable;--perhaps he could not finally consent to it, under any circumstances.[217] Gouverneur Morris, with his accustomed ardor, went further still, and insisted on re-opening the subject of representation, now that the other features of the system were to be made to favor the increase of slaves, and to throw the burdens of maintaining the government chiefly upon the Northern States. It was idle, he declared, to say that direct taxation might be levied upon the slaveholding States in proportion to their representative population: for the general government could never stretch out its hand, and put it directly into the pockets of the people, over so vast a country. Its revenues must be derived from exports, imports, and excises. He therefore would not consent to the sacrifices demanded, and moved the insertion of the word "free" before the word "inhabitants," in the article regulating the basis of representation.[218]