In September, 1785, the lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee of fifteen on the state of the republic.

In this committee there was a vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting slave importations for three years.

John Rutledge opposed it.

Since the peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves had been imported, which at L50 each would be trifling as a cause of the existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument that the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drive commerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of L90 in 1783, would be lost to the planters.

Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, stressed the need of retrenchment.