Meantime there was slowly arising a significant divergence of opinion on
the subject. Probably the whole country still regarded both slavery and
the slave-trade as temporary; but the Middle States expected to see the
abolition of both within a generation, while the South scarcely thought
it probable to prohibit even the slave-trade in that short time. Such a
difference might, in all probability, have been satisfactorily adjusted,
if both parties had recognized the real gravity of the matter. As it
was, both regarded it as a problem of secondary importance, to be solved
after many other more pressing ones had been disposed of. The
anti-slavery men had seen slavery die in their own communities, and
expected it to die the same way in others, with as little active effort
on their own part. The Southern planters, born and reared in a slave
system, thought that some day the system might change, and possibly
disappear; but active effort to this end on their part was ever farthest
from their thoughts. Here, then, began that fatal policy toward slavery
and the slave-trade that characterized the nation for three-quarters of
a century, the policy of _laissez-faire, laissez-passer_.


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