Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/293

 1787] Equal suffrage lost. New plan. 261 several owners. It was in substance as follows. The legislatures of the States should send an equal number of delegates to the second branch. In questions affecting the States themselves, or the extent of authority over their citizens, there should be equal suffrage ; so with appointments to civil office in which the second branch had a part. In fixing salaries, and in providing for public expenses and revenues, the States should have suffrage in proportion to the sums which they severally contributed. King was alarmed at the willingness to sacrifice the rights of men to the phantom of State sovereignty. He was prepared for any event rather than yield to a vicious principle. He might yield to some such expedient as that suggested by Wilson; he would not listen to a proposal of equality. Madison too was willing to follow Wilson's suggestion, provided that due independence be given to the Senate. Bedford argued that the Convention should provide against am- bition and avarice. The voting in the Convention itself had been dictated by those passions. The large States were seeking to aggrandise themselves at the expense of the small. Georgia was indeed a small State, but was actuated by the prospect of being great ; South Carolina was actuated both by present interest and future prospects. So of North Carolina ; so of the three great States. Could the small States act from pure disinterestedness? They would be ruined by inequality, whether through combination or through competition of the greater States. The small States would meet the large on no ground but that of the Con- federation. They had been told that this was the last chance ; he had no fear. The large States dared not dissolve the Confederation ; if they did dissolve it, the small would find foreign allies of higher honour and good faith. Ellsworth's motion for equal suffrage was lost, on July 2, by an equal division; and the debate was continued on the report of the committee in favour of proportional suffrage. But the Convention was soon at a full stop, as Sherman said; unwilling that it should break up, he proposed the appointment of a special committee to devise, if possible, some expedient. The suggestion was adopted. Three days later this committee brought in a report, founded upon a motion made before it by Franklin, the purport of which was, that all money bills should (as in most of the States) originate in the first branch of the legislature, and that such bills should not be amended in the second, and that in the second branch each State should have an equal vote. Both of these proposals were to be adopted, or neither. The members of the committee had been of different minds ; the report was brought forward merely to suggest some ground of accommodation. It was but barely agreed to by those opposed to equality ; the other side considered that they had practically gained their point. The concession in regard to money bills was not generally acceptable to the larger States. Experience, Madison said, had proved that such concessions CH. VIII.