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1787] Taxation of exports. Navigation laws. 279 northern States, the southern States could let the trade go into foreign bottoms. Sherman argued that it would be wrong to tax exports except in respect of articles which ought not to be exported. The complexity of business in America would make it impracticable to lay equal taxes on exports. Any oppression of the non-commercial States was to be guarded against by authorising the regulation of trade between the States. To give power to tax exports would wreck the whole work. The motion to modify the clause was unsuccessful ; but the failure of the motion affected the subject only in its relation to the first section of the article as to powers. Section 4 of the same article, in the reported draft of the Constitution, contained the following provision : " No tax or duty shall be laid by the [national] 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." This section should be considered in connexion with section 6 of the same article, which read : " No navigation Act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of the members present in each House." Both sections were framed in the interest of the southern States; the first clause of section 4 in that of all the southern States, as the chief producing and exporting region; the second and third clauses of the same section in the particular interest of South Carolina and Georgia, and, in less degree, of North Carolina ; while section 6 was intended to prevent the more populous commercial States of the North and East from passing legislation in matters of navigation which might be to the injury of the southern States. The Convention having, on August 1, reached section 4, the debate was renewed over the clause in regard to exports. The clause favoured of course those northern producing States which, having no harbours, were compelled to send their products through the ports of other States ; but, according to some of the northern members, it did not go far enough, for it still left them liable to be taxed by the States of whose ports they had to make use. Langdon, of New Hampshire, a producing State without a port, raised the point; the prohibition, he said, should be extended to the States which was subsequently done. Ellsworth, of Connecticut, a State also without harbours but with little to export, was satisfied with the clause, urging that the power of regu- lating trade between the States, which was to be given to the general government, would afford protection to States having no ports. If it did not, the attempt of one State to tax the products of another passing through it would force direct exportation by the latter. But Congress should, he thought, be restrained. Taxing exports would discourage industry, and the products of the different States were such that there could be no uniformity. There were but few articles which could be en. vin.