The first great compromise was between, not the North and the South, but the small and the large States. The one claimed, and the other refused, an equality of suffrage in the national legislature. It was at last agreed, that the suffrage should be equal in one house, and according to population in the other. This was the first compromise. Then came the question, What should constitute the representative population? The Southern States had more slaves than the Northern, and the former insisted that slaves should be included in the representative population. This would have given the Southern States an unfair preponderance in Congress. Moreover, a portion of the Southern States were engaged in the African slave-trade, and, of course, every slave landed on their shores would increase their political power in Congress. To reconcile the North to slave representation, it was offered that _direct taxation_ should be proportioned to representation. But the North was reluctant, and, as usual, was bullied into a compromise. Mr. Davie, of North Carolina, made a "deliberate declaration":--"He was sure that North Carolina would never confederate on any terms that did not rate them (the slaves) at least as three fifths. If the Eastern States meant, therefore, to exclude them (the slaves) altogether, the business was at an end." (_Madison Papers_, p. 1081.) This threat, and others like it, settled the matter. The compromise, of three fifths of the slaves to be included in the representative population, was accepted on the motion of _a New England member_; and the consequence is, that the slave States have now twenty-one members in the lower house of Congress more than they are entitled to by their free population. This was the second compromise. There was still a third, far more wicked and detestable, and effected by the "deliberate declarations" of Southern members. The "committee of detail" has been already mentioned. It consisted of Messrs. Rutledge of South Carolina, Randolph of Virginia, Wilson of Pennsylvania, Ellsworth of Connecticut, and Gorham of Massachusetts. This committee, it will be recollected, were to reduce to the _form_ of a Constitution the resolutions agreed on by the Convention. Neither in the resolutions themselves, nor in the discussions which preceded their adoption, had any reference been made to a guarantee for the continuance of the African slave-trade. Nevertheless, this committee, of their own will and pleasure, inserted in their draft the following clause:--"No tax or duty shall be laid by the legislature on articles exported from any State, _nor on the migration or importation of such persons as the several States shall think proper to admit, nor shall such migration or importation be prohibited_." To understand the cunning wickedness of this clause, it must be recollected that Congress was to have power to regulate foreign commerce, and commerce between the States; and hence it might, at a future time, suppress both the foreign and domestic commerce in human flesh, or it might burden this commerce with duties. Hence this artfully expressed perpetual restriction on the power of Congress to interfere with the traffic in human beings. As this grand scheme was concocted in the committee, and not in the Convention, it may be interesting to inquire into its paternity.