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 homogeneous 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--pass 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 assent 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 passed 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 Constitution, 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 passed by two thirds of each house, was to be insisted on by some, although not by all, of the Southern members.