resentation; but the convention had rejected this basis. Next to property, the best basis was the qualified voter. There had been some unwillingness to adopt the basis of manhood suffrage. If neither property nor manhood suffrage was to be the basis adopted, it should be the free white population of the State. The committee on the franchise had reported in favor of the federal basis. This was arbitrary, and, if established, tended to keep up dissensions in the State. It was well known, as was said in the Virginia convention of 1830, that the "federal basis was a departure from principle, insisted on by the Southern States as a guarantee, and consented to by the Northern States only as a compromise, without which the union of the States had been impossible. Its design was to preserve the balance of power and to protect the Southern States from encroachments by the Northern States." The local situation of the people of Louisiana made it unnecessary to adopt that basis, as slave-holders comprised the greater part of the white population. It had been said that if this basis was rejected, Louisiana would repudiate its essential institutions. But there was no analogy between the basis of representation in a commonwealth and in the United States. In a commonwealth where all submitted to the same laws, enjoyed the same franchise, held the same kind of property, it was idle to adopt an arbitrary system of apportionment, which was not only manifestly unjust, but repugnant to the social system of the State. Granted that the federal basis was proper for the Union,

The South and Its Heterogeneous Population

there was a peculiar impropriety in its adoption in the State, for it would expose slavery to the very risk to guard against which this basis had been insisted upon as essential at the time of the formation of the federal compact. In its local relations a State could find no necessity for adopting it. Practically, its adoption would result in great injustice. It would give to a few districts a disproportional representation, and enable them to control the whole Assembly. The western portion of the State was the richest in agricultural resources; it was fast increasing in slave population, and consequently its white population was proportionally small. Not a planter removed thither who did not carry with him from fifteen to twenty slaves, which was the average ownership in that part of the State. The comparative increase of white and slave population there was as one to seven; in Southern Louisiana the slave population was decreasing, especially in the city of New Orleans, where, in a population of one hundred and ten thousand whites, there were but eighteen thousand slaves, making a proportion of six whites to one slave. From the city of New Orleans to Baton Rouge the increase of the laboring white population was great, which accounted for the decrease in the number of slaves in that region, and their removal to the western portion of the State, or wherever their labor was more productive. If one of the new parishes in Western Louisiana, with an area of thirty to fifty square miles, was made a representative district, and to its white population

three-fifths of its slaves were added, it was certain that, as compared with one of the river parishes in southern Louisiana, whose white population was in the ratio of two to one of its slave population, the southern district would have less political power than the western, having a ratio of fifteen slaves to one white man. A more arbitrary system of representation could not be devised to transfer the political power of the State into the hands of a few persons residing in favored regions of the State.

Furthermore, if each district was to have one Representative, there would be a constant encouragement to create new districts. In the older portions of the State land was less productive and the people less able to incur heavy expenses by the formation of new districts. In the western part land was of extraordinary fertility; the population there could easily subdivide into new districts and bear the burdens of separate, parochial organization. The more numerous population in the east would be overbalanced by the number of parishes in the west. Political power would reside in that portion of the State which had been subdivided into many parishes expressly to produce preponderance. Why should slaves be represented and other property excluded? slaves, as property, were to be represented, why not include houses and land? If the owner of a slave was to be invested with greater political power by reason of that possession, why should not a capitalist enjoy the extension of political power

If

Where the Federal Number Failed

through the representation of his capital? All property should be treated alike.

It seems strange, perhaps, that the defenders of slavery should have admitted that the slavery compromise of the national Constitution was a departure from principle. It might seem that they would have claimed it as an illustration of the true principle of representative government. Because the federal basis, when men sought to apply it to the apportionment of representation in a commonwealth, proved unmanageable, it was said to be a departure from principle. Why, inquired a delegate, should but three-fifths of slave property, instead of two-fifths or one-half or the whole number, constitute the basis? Any basis fixed by an arbitrary principle was revolting to the sense of justice. It was with bad grace, indeed, that those who declaimed in favor of the inestimable right of suffrage for every white male should propose a basis that admitted three-fifths of the slave population, and put them on an equal footing with the white population, and by so much reduced the political power of the individual elec

tors.

As the debate proceeded it was discovered that the contending powers in the convention were the country against the town-as in Virginia in 1830, the highlands against the lowlands. If the white basis were adopted, the advantage would lie with the towns; if the slave basis, with the country. It was declared that the adoption of the white basis involved the existence of the agricult

ural interests of the State. It was a basis proper enough for a community whose institutions were dissimilar to those of Louisiana; but imperious necessity there demanded that slave property, from which the greatest amount of revenue was derived, and which was the source of the agricultural wealth of the State, should be considered a part of the basis of representation. Because of the existence of that species of property, and its function in agriculture, the white population of the country was comparatively less than the white population of the city; but the population of the country was permanent, and essentially attached to the soil and the institutions of the State. The city population was floating. The greatest interest of the State, that upon which its safety and perpetuity mainly depended, was the agricultural. Should this interest be sacrificed? Should the country be a victim in order that the city might control the destinies of the State? It would be impossible to adopt a perfectly equitable basis. New Orleans was a great and growing city, whose interests were disproportionate to those of the remainder of the State. It was filling up with all kinds of people, and was exposed to outbreaks and commotions. The country would not be justified in relinquishing the power which it had wielded, but had never abused, and transferring it to the city. The country was free from those sudden passions which pervert and carry men's minds to fearful extremities; it was a shield to the State, guarding it from sudden assaults