Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/159

 CH. IX.]  its most zealous advocates? The phrase stands in the midst of a number of others, every one of which relates to states in their separate capacity. Will not plain common sense, then, understand it, like the rest of its context, to relate to states in their separate capacities?

"But if the phrase of one for 30,000, is only meant to give the aggregate of representatives, and not at all to influence their apportionment among the states, then the one hundred and twenty being once found, in order to apportion them, we must recur to the former rule, which does it according to the numbers of the respective states; and we must take the nearest common divisor as the ratio of distribution, that is to say, that divisor, which, applied to every state, gives to them such numbers as, added together, come nearest to 120. This nearest common ratio will be found to be 28,858, and will distribute 119 of the 120 members, leaving only a single residuary one. It will be found, too, to place 96,648 fractional numbers in the eight northernmost states, and 105,582, in the southernmost. The following table shows it:

"Whatever may have been the intention, the effect of rejecting the nearest divisor, (which leaves but one residuary member,) and adopting a distant one, (which leaves eight,) is merely to take a member from New-York and Pennsylvania each, and give them to Vermont and officers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment."

§ 685. Each of these privileges is of great practical value and importance. In Great Britain the house of