31. ~The Action of the Confederation.~ The slave-trade was hardly touched upon in the Congress of the Confederation, except in the ordinance respecting the capture of slaves, and on the occasion of the Quaker petition against the trade, although, during the debate on the Articles of Confederation, the counting of slaves as well as of freemen in the apportionment of taxes was urged as a measure that would check further importation of Negroes. "It is our duty," said Wilson of Pennsylvania, "to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves; but this amendment [i.e., to count two slaves as one freeman] would give the _jus trium liberorum_ to him who would import slaves."[35] The matter was finally compromised by apportioning requisitions according to the value of land and buildings. After the Articles went into operation, an ordinance in regard to the recapture of fugitive slaves provided that, if the capture was made on the sea below high-water mark, and the Negro was not claimed, he should be freed. Matthews of South Carolina demanded the yeas and nays on this proposition, with the result that only the vote of his State was recorded against it.[36] On Tuesday, October 3, 1783, a deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a petition. Leave was granted the following day,[37] but no further minute appears. According to the report of the Friends, the petition was against the slave-trade; and "though the Christian rectitude of the concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the persons of fellow-men."[38] The only legislative activity in regard to the trade during the Confederation was taken by the individual States.[39] Before 1778 Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia had by law stopped the further importation of slaves, and importation had practically ceased in all the New England and Middle States, including Maryland. In consequence of the revival of the slave-trade after the War, there was then a lull in State activity until 1786, when North Carolina laid a prohibitive duty, and South Carolina, a year later, began her series of temporary prohibitions. In 1787-1788 the New England States forbade the participation of their citizens in the traffic. It was this wave of legislation against the traffic which did so much to blind the nation as to the strong hold which slavery still had on the country. FOOTNOTES: [1] These figures are from the _Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council_, etc. (London, 1789). [2] Sheffield, _Observations on American Commerce_, p. 28; P.L. Ford, _The Association of the First Congress_, in _Political Science Quarterly_, VI. 615-7.