Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/340

314 that it has disappointed every hope placed on it. He appealed to the doctrine and arguments used by themselves on a former occasion. It had been very properly observed (by Mr. Patterson) that representation was an expedient by which the meeting of the people themselves was rendered unnecessary; and that the representatives ought therefore to bear a proportion to the votes which their constituents, if convened, would respectively have. Was not this remark as applicable to one branch of the representation as to the other? But it had been said that the government would, in its operation, be partly federal, partly national; that although in the latter respect the representatives of the people ought to be in proportion to the people, yet, in the former, it ought to be according to the number of states. If there was any solidity in this distinction, he was ready to abide by it; if there was none, it ought to be abandoned. In all cases where the general government is to act on the people, let the people be represented, and the votes be proportional. In all cases where the government is to act on the states as such, in like manner as Congress now acts on them, let the states be represented, and the votes be equal This was the true ground of compromise, if there was any ground at all. But he denied that there was any ground. He called for a single instance in which the general government was not to operate on the people individually. The practicability of making laws, with coercive sanctions, for the states as political bodies, had been exploded on all hands. He observed, that the people of the large states would, in some way or other, secure to themselves a weight proportioned to the importance accruing from their superior numbers. If they could not effect it by a proportional representation in the government, they would probably accede to no government which did not, in a great measure, depend for its efficacy on their voluntary coöperation; in which case, they would indirectly secure their object. The existing Confederacy proved that where the acts of the general government were to be executed by the particular governments, the latter had a weight in proportion to their importance. No one would say that, either in Congress or out of Congress, Delaware had equal weight with Pennsylvania. If the latter was to supply ten times as much money as the former, and no compulsion could be used, it was of ten times more importance that she should voluntarily furnish the supply. In the Dutch confederacy, the votes of the provinces were equal; but Holland, which supplies about half the money, governed the whole republic. He enumerated the objections against an equality of votes in the second branch, notwithstanding the proportional representation in the first. 1. The minority could negative the will of the majority of the people. 2. They could extort measures, by making them a condition of their assent to other necessary measures. 3. They could obtrude measures on the majority, by virtue of the peculiar powers which would be vested in the Senate. 4. The evil, instead of being cured by time, would increase with every new state that should be admitted, as they must all be admitted on the principle of equality. 5. The