[440] Journals, XII. 15-17.
[441] Madison, Elliot, V. 212, 213.
[442] Madison, Elliot, V. 266.
[443] The Ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory was drawn by Nathan Dane of Massachusetts. It was reported in Congress July 11th, 1787, and was passed July 13th. The committee by whom it was reported were Messrs. Carrington and R. H. Lee of Virginia, Kearney of Delaware, Smith of New York, and Mr. Dane. The clause relating to contracts was in these words: "And in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood and declared, that no law ought ever to be made or have force in the said territory, that shall in any manner whatever interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, bona fide and without fraud previously formed." On the 28th of August, Mr. King moved in the Convention to insert the same clause in the Constitution; but it was opposed, and was not finally adopted until September 14, when it was incorporated in the phraseology in which it now stands in the Constitution. (Madison, Elliot, V. 485; Journal of the Convention, Elliot, I. 311.)
[444] Madison, Elliot, V. 133.
[445] Denmark, it is said, abolished the foreign slave-trade and the importation into her colonies in 1792, but the prohibitions were not to take effect until 1804. 1 Kent's Commentaries, 198, note (citing Mr. Wheaton).
[446] In the first draft of the Constitution reported by the Committee of Detail, it was provided that the importation of such persons as the States might think proper to admit should not be prohibited. When the committee to arrange, if possible, certain compromises between the Northern and Southern States was raised, this provision, with other matters, was referred, and it was finally agreed that the importation should not be prohibited before the year 1808. After the adoption of the Constitution, Congress, by the acts of March 22d, 1794, and May 10, 1800, prohibited the citizens and residents of the United States from carrying slaves to any foreign territory for the purpose of traffic. By the act of March 2, 1807, the importation of slaves into the United States after January 1, 1808, was prohibited under severe penalties. In 1818 and 1819 these penalties were further increased, and in 1820, the offence was made piracy. Although the discussion of the subject commenced in England at about the same time (1788), it was nearly twenty years before a bill could be carried through Parliament for the abolition of the traffic. Through the whole of that period, and down to the very last, counsel were repeatedly heard at the bar, in behalf of interested parties, to oppose the reform. The trade was finally abolished by act of Parliament in March, 1807; it was made a felony in 1810, and declared to be piracy in 1824. While, therefore, the representatives of a few of the Southern States of this Union refused to consent to an immediate prohibition, they did consent to engraft upon the Constitution what was in effect a declaration that the trade should be prohibited at a fixed period of time; and the trade was thus abolished by the United States, under a government of limited powers, with respect to their own territories, as soon as it was abolished by the "omnipotent" Parliament of Great Britain. Moreover, by consenting to give to the Union the power to regulate commerce, the Southern States enabled Congress to abolish the slave-trade with foreign countries thirteen years before the same trade was made unlawful to British vessels.
[447] Encyclopædia Americana, Art. "Wilson, James."
[448] Madison, Elliot, V. 78.
[449] Ibid. 213.