Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed the long loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; and the short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy from a single season of short crops and low prices.[8] The committee reported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to 51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by the state.

The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at this time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it.
[Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept.

26 and 28, 1785.] [Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct.

1, 1785.] When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in the legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the now unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade.

In the course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that every man who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a spiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves.