Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/284

258 to either could never be forgiven by their country, nor by themselves.$152$

Mr. HAMILTON observed, that individuals forming political societies modify their rights differently, with regard to suffrage. Examples of it are found in all the states. In all of them some individuals are deprived of the right altogether, not having the requisite qualification of property. In some of the states, the right of suffrage is allowed in some cases and refused in others. To vote for a member in one branch, a certain quantum of property—to vote for a member in another branch of the legislature, a higher quantum of property, is required. In like manner, states may modify their right of suffrage differently, the larger exercising a larger, the smaller a smaller, share of it. But as states are a collection of individual men, which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition? Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter. It has been said that, if the smaller states renounce their equality, they renounce, at the same time, their liberty. The truth is, it is a contest For power, not for liberty. Will the men composing the small states be less free than those composing the larger? The state of Delaware, having forty thousand souls, will lose power, if she has one tenth only of the votes allowed to Pennsylvania, having four hundred thousand; but will the people of Delaware be less free, if each citizen has an equal vote with each citizen of Pennsylvania? He admitted that common residence within the same state would produce a certain degree of attachment, and that this principle might have a certain influence on public affairs. He thought, however, that this might, by some precautions, be in a great measure excluded, and that no material inconvenience could result from it, as there could not be any ground for combination among the states whose influence was most dreaded. The only considerable distinction of interests lay between the carrying and non-carrying states—which divides, instead of uniting, the largest states. No considerable inconvenience had been found from the division of the state of New York into different districts of different sizes.

Some of the consequences of a dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of partial confederacies, had been pointed out. He would add another of a most serious nature. Alliances will immediately be formed with different rival and hostile nations of Europe, who will foment disturbances among ourselves, and make us parties to all their own quarrels. Foreign nations having American dominion, are, and must be, jealous of us. Their representatives betray the utmost anxiety for our fate; and for the result of this meeting, which must have an essential influence on it. It had been said, that respectability in the eyes of foreign nations was not the object at which we aimed; that the proper object of republican government