Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/201

1787.] people would not be secured by it to the national magistrate. The small states would lose all chance of an appointment from within themselves. Bad appointments would be made, the executives of the states being little conversant with characters not within their own small spheres. The state executives, too, notwithstanding their constitutional independence, being in fact dependent on the state legislatures, will generally be guided by the views of the latter, and prefer either favorites within the states, or such as it may be expected will be most partial to the interests of the state. A national executive thus chosen will not be likely to defend with becoming vigilance and firmness the national rights against state encroachments. Vacancies also must happen. How can these be filled? He could not suppose, either, that the executives would feel the interest in supporting the national executive which had been imagined. They will not cherish the great oak which is to reduce them to paltry shrubs.

On the question for referring the appointment of the national executive to the state executives, as proposed by Mr. Gerry,—

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, no, 9; Delaware, divided.$99$

Mr. PATTERSON moved, that the committee resume the clause relating to the rule of suffrage in the national legislature.

Mr. BREARLY seconds him. He was sorry, he said, that any question on this point was brought into view. It had been much agitated in Congress at the time of forming the Confederation, and was then rightly settled by allowing to each sovereign state an equal vote. Otherwise, the smaller states must have been destroyed instead of being saved. The substitution of a ratio, he admitted, carried fairness on the face of it, but, on a deeper examination, was unfair and unjust. Judging of the disparity of the states by the quota of Congress, Virginia would have sixteen votes, and Georgia but one. A like proportion to the others will make the whole number ninety. There will be three large states, and ten small ones. The large states, by which he meant Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, will carry every thing before them. It had been admitted, and was known to him from facts within New Jersey, that where large and small counties were united into a district for electing representatives for the district, the large counties always carried their point, and consequently the large states would do so. Virginia with her sixteen votes will be a solid column indeed, a formidable phalanx. While Georgia, with her solitary vote, and the other little states, will be obliged to throw themselves constantly into the scale of some large one, in order to have any weight at all. He had come to the Convention with a view of being as useful as he could, in giving energy and stability to the federal government. When the proposition for destroying the equality of votes came forward, he was astonished, he was alarmed. Is it fair, then, it will be asked, that Georgia should have an equal vote with Virginia? He would not say it was. What remedy, then? One only: that a map of the United States be spread out, that all the