Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/203

1787.] rights and interests have been safe under an authority thus constituted? It has been said that, if a national government is to be formed so as to operate on the people, and not on the states, the representatives ought to be drawn from the people. But why so? May not a legislature, filled by the state legislatures, operate on the people who choose the state legislatures? Or may not a practicable coercion be found? He admitted that there was none such in the existing system. He was attached strongly to the plan of the existing Confederacy, in which the people choose their legislative representatives, and the legislatures their federal representatives. No other amendments were wanting than to mark the orbits of the states with due precision, and provide for the use of coercion, which was the great point. He alluded to the hint, thrown out by Mr. Wilson, of the necessity to which the large states might be reduced, of confederating among themselves, by a refusal of the others to concur. Let them unite if they please, but let them remember that they have no authority to compel the others to unite. New Jersey will never confederate on the plan before the committee. She would be swallowed up. He had rather submit to a monarch, to a despot, than to such a fate. He would not only oppose the plan here, but, on his return home, do every thing in his power to defeat it there.

Mr. WILSON hoped, if the Confederacy should be dissolved, that a majority,— nay, a minority of the states would unite for their safety. He entered elaborately into the defence of a proportional representation, stating, for his first position, that, as all authority was derived from the people, equal numbers of people ought to have an equal number of representatives, and different numbers of people, different numbers of representatives. This principle had been improperly violated in the Confederation, owing to the urgent circumstances of the time. As to the case of A and B, stated by Mr. Patterson, he observed that, in districts as large as the states, the number of people was the best measure of their comparative wealth. Whether, therefore, wealth or numbers was to form the ratio, it would be the same. Mr. Patterson admitted persons, not property, to be the measure of suffrage. Are not the citizens of Pennsylvania equal to those of New Jersey? Does it require one hundred and fifty of the former to balance fifty of the latter? Representatives of different districts ought clearly to hold the same proportion to each other, as their respective constituents hold to each other. If the small states will not confederate on this plan, Pennsylvania, and he presumed some other states, would not confederate on any other. We have been told that, each state being sovereign, all are equal. So each man is naturally a sovereign over himself, and all men are therefore naturally equal. Can he retain this equality when he becomes a member of civil government? He cannot. As little can a sovereign state, when it becomes a member of a federal government. If New Jersey will not part with her sovereignty, it is vain to talk of government. A new partition of the states is desirable, but evidently and totally impracticable. 23