Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/408

 individuals who vote, he could take upon him to say what was the intention of the Constitution; the framers of that instrument were apprehensive of an elective Chief Magistrate; and their views were directed to prevent the putting up of any powerful man; that for this end the States should choose two, and that as public suffrage would be common to both, that either would be alike eligible, and as it was totally immaterial which—he feared that the election of a single individual might exhibit all the evils which afflicted Poland.

… He thought that after a contention of seven years, with a party who he had thought abused their power, the time was come when a better course would have been pursued; he had conceived that principles would have prevailed, and that men would not absorb every consideration; but, with a member of the Convention, he would say, I hoped after so long a course of pork that our diet would be changed, but I find it is pork still with only a change of sauce.

ⅭⅭⅭⅣ.

Morrisania, December 4th, 1803.

A circumstance, which turned up in conversation yesterday, has led me again to read over your letter of the third of November, and my answer of the twenty-eighth. I perceive now, that I mistook the drift of your inquiry, which is substantially whether the Congress can admit, as a new State, territory, which did not belong to the United States when the Constitution was made. In my opinion they cannot.

I always thought that, when we should acquire Canada and Louisiana it would be proper to govern them as provinces, and allow them no voice in our councils. In wording the third section of the fourth article, I went as far as circumstances would permit to establish the exclusion. Candor obliges me to add my belief, that, had it been more pointedly expressed, a strong opposition would have been made.

ⅭⅭⅭⅤ.

Morrisania, December 10th, 1803.

That if, in the new legislature, as in the old Congress, each had been equally represented, and each preserved an equal vote, the sacrifice of rights would have been equal. But when it was admitted, that, in the National Legislature, the Representatives should be