Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/277

1787.] their numbers? Is it because the representatives are chosen by the people themselves? So will be the representatives in the national legislature. Is it because the larger have more at stake than the smaller? The case will be the same with the larger and smaller states. Is it because the laws are to operate immediately on their persons and properties? The same is the case, in some degree, as the Articles of Confederation stand; the same will be the case, in a far greater degree, under the plan proposed to be substituted. In the cases of captures, of piracies, and of offences in a federal army, the property and persons of individuals depend on the laws of Congress. By the plan proposed, a complete power of taxation—the highest prerogative of supremacy—is proposed to be vested in the national government. Many other powers are added, which assimilate it to the government of individual states. The negative proposed on the state laws will make it an essential branch of the state legislatures, and of course will require that it should be exercised by a body established on like principles with the branches of those legislatures. That it is not necessary to secure the small states against the large ones, he conceived to be equally obvious. Was a combination of the large ones dreaded? This must arise either from some interest common to Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and distinguishing them from the other states; or from the mere circumstance of similarity of size. Did any such common interest exist? In point of situation, they could not have been more effectually separated from each other by the most jealous citizen of the most jealous states. In point of manners, religion, and the other circumstances which sometimes beget affection between different communities, they were not more assimilated than the other states. In point of the staple productions, they were as dissimilar as any three other states in the Union. The staple of Massachusetts was fish, of Pennsylvania flour, of Virginia tobacco. Was a combination to be apprehended from the mere circumstance of equality of size? Experience suggested no such danger. The Journals of Congress did not present any peculiar association of these states in the votes recorded. It had never been seen that different counties in the same state, conformable in extent, but disagreeing in other circumstances, betrayed a propensity to such combinations. Experience rather taught a contrary lesson. Among individuals of superior eminence and weight in society, rivalships were much more frequent than coalitions. Among independent nations, preëminent over their neighbors, the same remark was verified. Carthage and Rome tore one another to pieces, instead of uniting their forces to devour the weaker nations of the earth. The houses of Austria and France were hostile as long as they remained the greatest powers of Europe. England and France have succeeded to the preëminence and to the enmity. To this principle we owe perhaps our liberty. A coalition between those powers would have been fatal to us. Among the principal members of ancient and modern confederacies, we find the same effect from