CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRST GRAND COMPROMISES OF THE CONSTITUTION.-POPULATION OF THE STATES ADOPTED AS THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION IN THE HOUSE. RULE FOR COMPUTING THE SLAVES.-EQUALITY OF REPRESENTATION OF THE STATES ADOPTED FOR THE SENATE.

As the states were now exactly divided on the question whether there should be an equality of votes in the second branch of the legislature, some compromise seemed to be necessary, or the effort to make a constitution must be abandoned. A conversation as to what was expedient to be done, resulted in the appointment of a committee of one member from each state, to devise and report some mode of adjusting the whole system of repre

sentation.'

According to the Virginia plan, as it then stood before the Convention, the right of suffrage in both branches was to be upon some equitable ratio, in proportion to the whole number of free inhabitants in each state, to which three fifths of all other persons, except Indians not paying taxes, were to be added. Nothing had been done to fix the ratio of representation; and although the principle of popular representation had been affirmed by a majority of the Convention as to the first branch, it had been rejected as to the second by an equally divided vote of the states. The whole subject, therefore, was now sent to a committee of compromise, who held it under consideration for three days.*

The same struggle which had been carried on in the Convention was renewed in the committee; the one side contending for an inequality of suffrage in both branches, the other for an equal

The committee consisted of Gerry, Ellsworth, Yates, Patterson, Franklin, Bedford, Martin, Mason, Davie, Rutledge, and Baldwin.

The committee was appointed on the 2d of July, and made their report on the 5th. The Convention, in the interval, transacted no business.

ity in both. Dr. Franklin at length gave way, and proposed that the representation in the first branch should be according to a fixed ratio of the inhabitants of each state, computed according to the rule already agreed upon, and that in the second branch each state should have an equal vote. The members of the larger states reluctantly acquiesced in this arrangement; the members of the smaller states, with one or two exceptions, considered their point gained. When the report came to be made, it was found that the committee had not only agreed upon this as a compromise, but that they had made a distinction of some importance between the powers of the two branches, by confining to the first branch the power of originating all bills for raising or appropriating money and for fixing the salaries of officers of the government, and by providing that such bills should not be altered or amended in the second branch. This was intended for a concession by the smaller states to the larger. The ratio of representation in the House was fixed by the committee at one member for every forty thousand inhabitants, in which three fifths of the slaves were to be computed; each state not possessing that number of inhabitants to be allowed one member. The number of senators was not designated.

This arrangement was, upon the whole, reasonable and equitable. It balanced the equal representation of the states in the Senate against the popular representation in the House, and it gave to the larger states an important influence over the appropriations of money and the levying of taxes. Nor can the admission of the slaves, in some proportion, into the rule of representation, be justly considered as an improper concession, in a system in which the separate organizations of the states were to be retained, and in which the states were to be represented in proportion to their respective populations.

The report of the committee had recommended that this plan should be taken as a whole; but as its several features were distasteful to different sections of the Convention, and almost all parties were disappointed in the result arrived at by the committee, the several parts of the plan became at once separate subjects of discussion. In the first place, the friends of a pure system of

See further as to this exclusive power of the House, post.

popular representation in both branches objected to the provision concerning money and appropriation bills, as being no concession on the part of the smaller states, and as a useless restriction.' It therefore, in their view, left in force all their objections against allowing each state an equal voice in the Senate. But it was voted to retain it in the report, and the equal vote of the states in the second branch was also retained.'

The scale of apportionment of representatives, recommended in the report of the committee, was also objected to on various grounds. It was said that a mere representation of persons was not what the circumstances of the case required; that property as well as persons ought to be taken into the account in order to obtain a just index of the relative rank of the states. It was also urged that, if the system of representation were to be settled on a ratio confined to the population alone, the new states in the West would soon equal, and probably outnumber, the Atlantic States, and thus the latter would be in a minority forever. For these reasons the subject of apportioning the representatives was recommitted to five members, who subsequently proposed a scheme by which the first House of Representatives should consist of fiftysix members, distributed among the states upon an estimate of their present condition," and authorizing the legislature, as future circumstances might require, to increase the number of representatives, and to distribute them among the states upon a compound ratio of their wealth and the numbers of their inhabitants." The latter part of this proposition was adopted, but a new and different apportionment, of sixty-five members for the first meeting of the legislature, was sanctioned by a large vote of the states,

4

I Madison, Butler, Gouverneur Morris, and Wilson.

2 Five states voted to retain it, three voted against it, and three were divided. This was treated as an affirmative vote. Elliot, V. 255.

Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, ay, 6; Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, no, 3; Massachusetts, Georgia, divided. Ibid., 285, 286.

• Gouverneur Morris, Gorham, Randolph, Rutledge, and King.

They gave to New Hampshire, 2; Massachusetts, 7; Rhode Island, 1; Connecticut, 4; New York, 5; New Jersey, 3; Pennsylvania, 8; Delaware, 1; Maryland, 4; Virginia, 9; North Carolina, 5; South Carolina, 5; Georgia, 2.

after a second reference to a committee of one member from each state.'

These votes had been taken for the purpose of agreeing upon amendments to the original report of the compromise committee, which they would have so modified as to introduce into it, in place of a ratio of forty thousand inhabitants, including three fifths of the slaves, a fixed number of representatives for the first meeting of the legislature, distributed by estimate among the states, and for all subsequent meetings an apportionment by the legislature itself upon the combined principles of the wealth and numbers of inhabitants of the several states. But in order to understand the objections to the latter part of this proposition, and the modifications that were still to be made in it, it is necessary for us here to recur to that special interest which caused a new and most serious difficulty in the subject of representation, and which now began to be distinctly asserted by those whose duty it was to provide for it. There is no part of the history of the Constitution that more requires to be examined with a careful attention to facts, with an unprejudiced consideration of the purposes and motives of those who became the agents of its great compromises and compacts between sovereign states, and with an impartial survey of the difficulties with which they had to contend.

Twice had the Convention affirmed the propriety of counting the slaves, if the states were to be represented according to the numbers of their inhabitants; and on the part of the slaveholding states there had hitherto been no dissatisfaction manifested with the old proportion of three fifths, originally proposed under the Confederation as a rule for including them in the basis of taxable property. But the idea was now advanced that numbers of inhabitants were not a sufficient measure of the wealth of a state, and that, in adjusting a system of representation between such states as those of the American Union, regard should be had to their relative wealth, since those which were to be the most heavily taxed ought to have a proportionate influence in the government.

1 This apportionment gave to New Hampshire, 3; Massachusetts, 8; Rhode Island, 1; Connecticut, 5; New York, 6; New Jersey, 4; Pennsylvania, 8; Delaware, 1; Maryland, 6; Virginia, 10; North Carolina, 5; South Carolina, 5; Georgia, 3.

Hence the plan of combining numbers and wealth in the rule. This was mainly an expedient to prevent the balance of power from passing to the Western from the Atlantic States.' It was supposed that the former might in progress of time have the larger amount of population; but that, as the latter would at the commencement of the government have the power in their own hands, they might deal out the right of representation to new states in such proportions as would be most for their own interests. Still there were grave objections to this combined rule of numbers and wealth as applied to the slaveholding states. In the first place, it was extremely vague; it left the question wholly undetermined whether the slaves were to be regarded as persons or as property, and therefore left that question to be settled by the legislature at every revision of the system. Moreover, although this rule might enable the Atlantic States to retain the predominating influence in the government as against the Western interests, it might also enable the Northern to retain the control as against the Southern States, after the former had lost and the latter had gained a majority of population. The proposed conjectural apportionment of members for the first Congress would give thirty-six members to the states that held few or no slaves, and twenty-nine to the states that held many. Mason and Randolph, who represented in a candid manner the objections which Virginia must entertain to such a scheme, did not deny that, according to the present population of the states, the northern part had a right to preponderate; but they said that this might not always be the case; and yet that the power might be retained unjustly, if the proportion on which future apportionments were to be made by the legislature were not ascertained by a definite rule, and peremptorily fixed by the Constitution. Gouverneur Morris, who strenuously maintained the necessity for guarding the interests of the Atlantic against those of the Western States, insisted that the combined principles of numbers and wealth gave a sufficient rule for the legislature; that it was a rule which they could execute; and that it would avoid the necessity of a distinct and special admission of the slaves into the census, an idea which he was sure the people of Pennsylvania would reject. Mr. Madison argued,

1 See Mr. Gorham's explanation; Madison, Elliot, V. 288.