Mr. DAWES said, he was sorry to hear so many objections raised against the paragraph under consideration.  He though them wholly unfounded; that the black inhabitants of the southern States must be considered either as slaves, and as so much property, or in the character of so many freemen; if the former, why should they not be wholly represented?  Our own State laws and Constitution would lead us to consider those blacks as freemen, and so indeed would our own ideas of natural justice:  if, then, they are freemen, they might form an equal basis for representation as though they were all white inhabitants.  In either view, therefore, he could not see that the northern States would suffer, but directly to the contrary.  He thought, however, that gentlemen would do well to connect the passage in dispute with another article in the Constitution, that permits Congress, in the year 1808, wholly to prohibit the importation of slaves, and in the mean time to impose a duty of ten dollars a head on such blacks as should be imported before that period.  Besides, by the new Constitution, every particular State is left to its own option totally to prohibit the introduction of slaves into its own territories.  What could the convention do more?  The members of the southern States, like ourselves, have their prejudices.  It would not do to abolish slavery, by an act of Congress, in a moment, and so destroy what our southern brethren consider as property.  But we may say, that although slavery is not smitten by an apoplexy, yet it has received a mortal wound and will die of a consumption.

Mr. NEAL (from Kittery,) went over the ground of objection to this section on the idea that the slave trade was allowed to be continued for 20 years.  His profession, he said, obliged him to bear witness against any thing that should favor the making merchandise of the bodies of men, and unless his objection was removed, he could not put his hand to the Constitution.  Other gentlemen said, in addition to this idea, that there was not even a proposition that the negroes ever shall be free, and Gen. THOMPSON exclaimed: 

Mr. President, shall it be said, that after we have established our own independence and freedom, we make slaves of others?  Oh!  Washington, what a name has he had!  How he has immortalized himself! but he holds those in slavery who have a good right to be free as he has—­he is still for self; and, in my opinion, his character has sunk 50 per cent.

On the other side, gentlemen said, that the step taken in this article towards the abolition of slavery, was one of the beauties of the Constitution.  They observed, that in the confederation there was no provision whatever for its ever being abolished; but this Constitution provides, that Congress may, after 20 years, totally annihilate the slave trade; and that, as all the States, except two, have passed laws to this effect, it might reasonably be expected, that it would then be done.  In the interim, all the States were at liberty to prohibit it.