Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/199

1787.] and will not the general interest be continually sacrificed to local interests?

Mr. DICKINSON deemed it impossible to draw a line between the cases proper, and improper, for the exercise of the negative. We must take our choice of two things. We must either subject the states to the danger of being injured by the power of the national government, or the latter to the danger of being injured by that of the states. He thought the danger greater from the states. To leave the power doubtful would be opening another spring of discord, and he was for shutting as many of them as possible.

Mr. BEDFORD, in answer to his colleague's question, where would be the danger to the states from this power, would refer him to the smallness of his own state, which may be injured at pleasure without redress. It was meant, he found, to strip the small states of their equal right of suffrage. In this case, Delaware would have about one ninetieth for its share in the general councils; whilst Pennsylvania and Virginia would possess one third of the whole. Is there no difference of interests, no rivalship of commerce, of manufactures? Will not these large states crush the small ones, whenever they stand in the way of their ambitious or interested views? This shows the impossibility of adopting such a system as that on the table, or any other founded on a change in the principle of representation. And, after all, if a state does not obey the law of the new system, must not force be resorted to, as the only ultimate remedy, in this as in any other system? It seems as if Pennsylvania and Virginia, by the conduct of their deputies, wished to provide a system in which they would have an enormous and monstrous influence. Besides, how can it be thought that the proposed negative can be exercised? Are the laws of the states to be suspended in the most urgent cases, until they can be sent seven or eight hundred miles, and undergo the deliberation of a body who may be incapable of judging of them? Is the national legislature, too, to sit continually, in order to revise the laws of the states?

Mr. MADISON observed, that the difficulties which had been started were worthy of attention, and ought to be answered before the question Was put. The case of laws of urgent necessity must be provided for by some emanation of the power from the national government into each state so far as to give a temporary assent, at least. This was the practice in the royal colonies before the revolution and would not have been inconvenient if the supreme power of negativing had been faithful to the American interest, and had possessed the necessary information. He supposed that the negative might be very properly lodged in the Senate alone, and that the more numerous and expensive branch, therefore, might not be obliged to sit constantly. He asked Mr. Bedford, what would be the consequence to the small states of a dissolution of the Union, which seemed likely to happen if no effectual substitute was made for the defective system existing; and he did not conceive any effectual system could be