Inhabitants of the coast and the frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to pay high prices for their labor.

He mentioned a recently enacted law of Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13] Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the solution to the legislature.
[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec.

5, 1803.] In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale.

Slave prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made.

The governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to bringing the system of exclusion to an end.
[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p.