Surely, then, with such results to look back upon, with such hopes in the future, the patriot and the Christian can have no real cause for regret or complaint, that in a system of representative government, made necessary by controlling circumstances, the unimportant anomaly should be found, of a representation of men without political rights or social privileges; or that the question of emancipation, either for the mass or the individual, should be carefully secured to local authority; or even that the slave-trade should have been prosecuted for a few years, to be extinguished by America first of all the nations of the world. FOOTNOTES: [211] See Madison, Elliot, V. 302, 357. [212] See the remarks of Gouverneur Morris in the debate on the apportionment of representatives, in which he stated the dilemma precisely in this way. Elliot, V. 301. [213] No candid man, said Rufus King, could undertake to justify to them a system under which slaves were to continue to be imported, and to be represented, while the exports produced by their labor were not to pay any part of the expenses of the government which would be obliged to defend their masters against domestic insurrections or foreign attacks. Elliot, V. 391. [214] See the remarks of Mr. Ellsworth and General Pinckney, as reported by Mr. Madison, Elliot, V. 458, 459. [215] They were Messrs. Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham, Ellsworth, and Wilson. I have classed Mr. Ellsworth among the representatives of non-slaveholding States; for although there were between two and three thousand slaves in Connecticut at this time, provision had already been made for its prospective and gradual abolition. It was not finally extinct in that State until after the year 1840. The United States census for 1790 returned 2,759 slaves for Connecticut; the census for 1840 returned 17; in the census for 1850 none were returned. A like gradual abolition took place in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania. In Massachusetts, slavery was abolished by the State Constitution of 1780. [216] See the remarks of Mr. Madison, Elliot, V. 490. [217] Madison, Elliot, V. 391, 392. [218] Ibid. 392, 393. [219] New Jersey. [220] The opposition to a power to tax exports was not confined to the members from North and South Carolina and Georgia. Ellsworth and Sherman of Connecticut, Mason of Virginia, and Gerry of Massachusetts considered such a power wrong in principle, and incapable of being exercised with equality and justice.