The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution; As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in by Jonathan Elliot

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. ...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 cooperation; 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...