Oliver Ellsworth said: "Let every State import what it pleases. The morality or wisdom of slavery is a consideration belonging to the States. What enriches a part enriches the whole, and the States are the best judges of their particular interests." Charles Pinckney said: "South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade. If the States be left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may, perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as Maryland and Virginia already have done." Roger Sherman concurred with his colleague Mr. Ellsworth. "He disapproved of the slave trade; but as the States now possessed the right, and the public good did not require it to be taken away, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of government, he would leave the matter as he found it. The abolition of slavery seemed to be going on, and the good sense of the several States would probably, by degrees, soon complete it." George Mason said: "Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce a pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren, from a lust of gain, had embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the right to import, that was the case of many other rights now to be given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery." Ellsworth, not well pleased with this thrust at his slave-trading friends at the North by a slaveholder, tartly replied: "As I have never owned a slave, I cannot judge of the effects of slavery on character; but if slavery is to be considered in a moral light, the convention ought to go further, and free those already in the country." The opposition of Virginia and Maryland to the importation of slaves he attributed to the fact that, on account of their rapid increase in those States, "it was cheaper to raise them there than to import them, while in the sickly rice-swamps foreign supplies were necessary. If we stop short with prohibiting their importation, we shall be unjust to South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As population increases, poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery, in time, will not be a speck in our country."