Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/332

306 Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, ay, 6; New Jersey, Delaware, no, 2; Massachusetts, South Carolina, divided.

Adjourned. 

, July 13.

In Convention.—It being moved to postpone the clause in the report of the committee of eleven as to the originating of money bills in the first branch, in order to take up the following, "that in the second branch each state shall have an equal voice,"—

Mr. GERRY moved to add, as an amendment to the last clause agreed to by the House, "that, from the first meeting of the legislature of the United States till a census shall be taken, all moneys to be raised for supplying the public treasury by direct taxation shall be assessed on the inhabitants of the several states according to the number of their representatives respectively in the first branch." He said this would be as just before as after the census, according to the general principle that taxation and representation ought to go together.

Mr. WILLIAMSON feared that New Hampshire will have reason to complain. Three members were allotted to her as a liberal allowance, for this reason, among others—that she might not suppose any advantage to have been taken of her absence. As she was still absent, and had no opportunity of deciding whether she would choose to retain the number on the condition of her being taxed in proportion to it, he thought the number ought to be reduced from three to two, before the question was taken on Mr. Gerry's motion.

Mr. READ could not approve of the proposition. He had observed, he said, in the committee a backwardness, in some of the members from the large states, to take their full proportion of representatives. He did not then see the motive. He now suspects it was to avoid their due share of taxation. He had no objection to a just and accurate adjustment of representation and taxation to each other.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS and Mr. MADISON answered, that the charge itself involved an acquittal; since, notwithstanding the augmentation of the number of members allotted to Massachusetts and Virginia, the motion for proportioning the burdens thereto was made by a member from the former state, and was approved by Mr. Madison, from the latter, who was on the committee. Mr. Gouverneur Morris said, that he thought Pennsylvania had her due share in eight members; and he could not in candor ask for more. Mr. Madison said, that, having always conceived that the difference of interest in the United States lay not between the large and small, but the Northern and Southern States, and finding that the number of members allotted to the Northern States was greatly superior, he should have preferred an addition of two members to the Southern States—to wit, one to North and one to South Carolina, rather than of one member to Virginia. He liked the present motion, because it tended to moderate the views both of the opponents and advocates for rating very high the negroes.

