Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/172

 164 just share. If there be one state in the Union with less than its right, some other state has more than its right, so that the argument, whatever be its force, applies to the bill in its present form, as strongly as it can ever apply to any bill.

"But the objection most usually urged against the principle of the proposed amendment is, that it provides for the representation of fractions. Let this objection be examined and considered. Let it be ascertained, in the first place, what these fractions, or fractional numbers, or residuary numbers, really are, which, it is said, will be represented, should the amendment prevail.

"A fraction is the broken part of some integral number. It is, therefore, a relative or derivative idea. It implies the previous existence of some fixed number, of which it is but a part, or remainder. If there be no necessity for fixing or establishing such previous number, then the fraction, resulting from it, is itself no matter of necessity, but matter of choice or of accident. Now the argument, which considers the plan proposed in the amendment, as a representation effractions, and therefore unconstitutional, assumes, as its basis, that, according to the constitution, every member of the house of representatives represents, or ought to represent, the same, or nearly the same, number of constituents: that this number is to be regarded, as an integer; and any thing less than this is, therefore, called a fraction, or a residuum, and cannot be entitled to a representative. But all this is not the provision of the constitution of the United States. That constitution contemplates no integer, or any common number for the constituents of a member of the house of representatives. It goes not at all into these subdivisions of the population of a state. It provides for the apportionment of representatives among the several states, according to their respective numbers, and stops there. It makes no provision for the representation of districts, of states, or for the representation of any portion of the people of a state, less than the whole. It says nothing of ratios or of constituent numbers. All these things it leaves to state legislation. The right, which each state possesses to its own due portion of the representative power, is a state right, strictly; it belongs to the state, as a state; and it is to be used and exercised, as the state may see fit, subject only to the constitutional qualifications of electors. In fact, the states do make, and always have made, different provisions for the exercise of this power. In some, a single member is chosen for a certain defined district; in others, two or three members are chosen, it is involved in great obscurity. To what classes of offenders it applies, will be more properly an inquiry hereafter. In the constitution of the United