Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/374

354 It was urged that, upon these principles, the Pennsylvanian, or inhabitant of a large state, was of as much consequence as the inhabitant of Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, or any other state—that his consequence was to be decided by his situation in his own state; that, if he was there as free, if he had as great share in the forming of his own government, and in the making and executing its laws, as the inhabitants of those other states, then was he equally important and of equal consequence. Suppose a con- federation of states had never been adopted, but every stale had remained absolutely in its independent situation,—no person could, with propriety, say that the citizen of the large state was not as important as the citizen of the smaller. The confederation of states cannot alter the case. It was said that, in all transactions between state and state, the freedom, independence, importance, and consequence, even the individuality, of each citizen of the different states, might with propriety be said to be swallowed up or concentrated in the independence, the freedom, and the individuality, of the state of which they are citizens; that the thirteen states are thirteen distinct, political, individual existences, as to each other; that the federal government is, or ought to be, a government over these thirteen political, individual existences, which form the members of that government; and as the largest state is only a single individual of this government, it ought to have only one vote; the smallest state, also being one individual member of this government, ought also to have one vote. To those who urged that the states having equal suffrage was contrary to the feelings of the human heart, it was answered, that it was admitted to be contrary to the feelings of pride and ambition; but those were feelings which ought not to be gratified at the expense of freedom.

It was urged that the position that great states would have great objects in view, in which they would suffer the less states to thwart them, was one of the strongest reasons why inequality of representation ought not to be admitted. If those great objects were not inconsistent with the interest of the less states, they would readily concur in them; but if they were inconsistent with the interest of a majority of the states composing the government, in that case two or three states ought not to have it in their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of all the rest. To those who alleged that equality of suffrage, in our federal government, was the poisonous source from which all our misfortunes flowed, it was answered that the allegation was not founded in fact—that equality of suffrage had never been complained of, by the states, as a defect in our federal system—that, among the eminent writers, foreigners and others, who had treated of the defects of our Confederation, and proposed alterations, none had proposed an alteration in this part of the system; and members of the Convention, both in and out of Congress, who advocated the equality of suffrage, called upon their opponents, both in and out of Congress, and challenged them to produce one single instance where a bad measure had been adopted, or a good measure had failed of adoption, in consequence of the states having an equal vote. On the contrary, they urged that all our evils flowed from the want of power in the federal head, and that, let the right of suffrage in the states be altered in any manner whatever, if no greater power were given to the government, the same inconveniences would continue.

It was denied that the equality of suffrage was originally agreed to on principles of necessity or expediency; on the contrary, that it was adopted on the principles of the rights of men, and the rights of states, which were then well known, and which then influenced our conduct, although now they