The scale of apportionment of representatives, recommended in the report of the committee, was also objected to on various grounds. It was said that a mere representation of persons was not what the circumstances of the case required;—that property as well as persons ought to be taken into the account in order to obtain a just index of the relative rank of the States. It was also urged, that, if the system of representation were to be settled on a ratio confined to the population alone, the new States in the West would soon equal, and probably outnumber, the Atlantic States, and thus the latter would be in a minority for ever. For these reasons, the subject of apportioning the representatives was recommitted to five members,[92] who subsequently proposed a scheme, by which the first House of Representatives should consist of fifty-six members, distributed among the States upon an estimate of their present condition,[93] and authorizing the legislature, as future circumstances might require, to increase the number of representatives, and to distribute them among the States upon a compound ratio of their wealth and the numbers of their inhabitants.[94] The latter part of this proposition was adopted, but a new and different apportionment, of sixty-five members for the first meeting of the legislature, was sanctioned by a large vote of the States, after a second reference to a committee of one member from each State.[95]
These votes had been taken for the purpose of agreeing upon amendments to the original report of the compromise committee, which they would have so modified as to introduce into it, in place of a ratio of forty thousand inhabitants, including three fifths of the slaves, a fixed number of representatives for the first meeting of the legislature, distributed by estimate among the States, and for all subsequent meetings an apportionment by the legislature itself upon the combined principles of the wealth and numbers of inhabitants of the several States. But in order to understand the objections to the latter part of this proposition, and the modifications that were still to be made in it, it is necessary for us here to recur to that special interest which caused a new and most serious difficulty in the subject of representation, and which now began to be distinctly asserted by those whose duty it was to provide for it. There is no part of the history of the Constitution that more requires to be examined with a careful attention to facts, with an unprejudiced consideration of the purposes and motives of those who became the agents of its great compromises and compacts between sovereign States, and with an impartial survey of the difficulties with which they had to contend.
Twice had the Convention affirmed the propriety of counting the slaves, if the States were to be represented according to the numbers of their inhabitants; and on the part of the slaveholding States there had hitherto been no dissatisfaction manifested with the old proportion of three fifths, originally proposed under the Confederation as a rule for including them in the basis of taxable property. But the idea was now advanced, that numbers of inhabitants were not a sufficient measure of the wealth of a State, and that, in adjusting a system of representation between such States as those of the American Union, regard should be had to their relative wealth, since those which were to be the most heavily taxed ought to have a proportionate influence in the government. Hence the plan of combining numbers and wealth in the rule. This was mainly an expedient to prevent the balance of power from passing to the Western from the Atlantic States.[96] It was supposed that the former might in progress of time have the larger amount of population; but that, as the latter would at the commencement of the government have the power in their own hands, they might deal out the right of representation to new States in such proportions as would be most for their own interests. Still there were grave objections to this combined rule of numbers and wealth as applied to the slaveholding States. In the first place, it was extremely vague; it left the question wholly undetermined whether the slaves were to be regarded as persons or as property, and therefore left that question to be settled by the legislature at every revision of the system. Moreover, although this rule might enable the Atlantic States to retain the predominating influence in the government as against the Western interests, it might also enable the Northern to retain the control as against the Southern States, after the former had lost and the latter had gained a majority of population. The proposed conjectural apportionment of members for the first Congress would give thirty-six members to the States that held few or no slaves, and twenty-nine to the States that held many. Mason and Randolph, who represented in a candid manner the objections which Virginia must entertain to such a scheme, did not deny, that, according to the present population of the States, the Northern part had a right to preponderate; but they said that this might not always be the case; and yet that the power might be retained unjustly, if the proportion on which future apportionments were to be made by the legislature were not ascertained by a definite rule, and peremptorily fixed by the Constitution. Gouverneur Morris, who strenuously maintained the necessity for guarding the interests of the Atlantic against those of the Western States, insisted that the combined principles of numbers and wealth gave a sufficient rule for the legislature; that it was a rule which they could execute; and that it would avoid the necessity of a distinct and special admission of the slaves into the census,—an idea which he was sure the people of Pennsylvania would reject. Mr. Madison argued, forcibly, that unfavorable distinctions against the new States that might be formed in the West would be both unjust and impolitic. He thought that their future contributions to the treasury had been much underrated; that the extent and fertility of the Western soil would create a vast agricultural interest; and that, whether the imposts on the foreign supplies which they would require were levied at the mouth of the Mississippi or in the Atlantic ports, their trade would certainly advance with their population, and would entitle them to a rule which should assume numbers to be a fair index of wealth.
The arguments against the combined principles of numbers and wealth, as a mere general direction to the legislature, and against their joint operation upon the contrasted interests of the Western and the Atlantic States, appear to have prevailed with some of the more prominent of the Northern members.[97] Accordingly, when a counter proposition was brought forward by Williamson,[98]—which contemplated a return to the principle of numbers alone, and was intended to provide for a periodical census of the free white inhabitants and of three fifths of all other persons, and that the representation should be regulated accordingly,—six States on a division of the question voted for a census of the free inhabitants, and four States recorded their votes against it.[99] This result brought the Convention to a direct vote upon the naked question whether the slaves should be included as persons, and in the proportion of three fifths, in the census for the future apportionment of representatives among the States.
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania now, for the first time, separated themselves from Virginia. It was perceived that a system of representation by numbers would draw after it the necessity for an admission of the slaves into the enumeration, unless it were confined to the free inhabitants. On the one hand, the delegates of these two States had to look to the probable encouragement of the slave-trade, that would follow an admission of the blacks into the representation, and to the probable refusal of their constituents to sanction such an admission. On the other hand, they had to encounter the difficulty of arranging a just rule of popular representation between States which would have no slaves, or very few, and States which would have great numbers of persons in that condition, without giving to the latter class of States some weight in the government proportioned to the magnitude of their populations. But they would not directly admit the naked principle that a slave is to be placed in the same category with a freeman for the purpose of representation, when he has no voice in the appointment of the representative; and the proposition was rejected by their votes and those of four other States.[100] Thereupon the whole substitute of Mr. Williamson, which contemplated numerical representation in the place of the combined rule of numbers and wealth, was unanimously rejected.
The report of the committee of compromise still stood, therefore, but modified into the proposition of a fixed number for the first House of Representatives, and a rule to be compounded of the numbers and wealth of the States, to be applied by the legislature in adjusting the representation in future houses. A difficulty, apparently insuperable, had defeated the application of the simple and—as it might otherwise appropriately be called—the natural rule of numerical representation. The social and political condition of the slave, so totally unlike that of the freeman, presented a problem hitherto unknown in the voluntary construction of representative government. It was certainly true, that, by the law of the community in which he was found, and by his normal condition, he could have no voice in legislation. It was equally true, that he was no party to the establishment of any State constitution; that nobody proposed to make him a party to the Constitution of the United States, to confer upon him any rights or privileges under it, or to give to the Union any power to affect or influence his status in a single particular. It was true also, that the condition in which he was held was looked upon with strong disapprobation and dislike by the people of several of the States, and it was not denied by some of the wisest and best of the Southern statesmen that it was a political and social evil.
Still, there were more than half a million of these people of the African race, distributed among five of the States, performing their labor, constituting their peasantry, and—if the numbers of laborers in a community form any just index of its wealth and importance—forming in each of those States a most important element in its relative magnitude and weight. It should be recollected, that the problem before the framers of the Constitution was, not how to create a system of representation for a single community possessing in all its parts the same social institutions, but how to create a system in which different communities of mere freemen and other different communities of freemen and slaves could be represented, in a limited government instituted for certain special objects, with a proper regard to the respective rights and interests of those communities, and to the magnitude of the stake which they would respectively have in the legislation by which all were to be affected.[101]
It does not appear, from any records of the discussions that have come down to us, in what way it was supposed the combined rule of numbers and wealth could be applied. If its application were left to Congress, in adjusting the system with reference to slaveholding States, the slaves must be counted as persons or as property; and as the proposed rule did not determine which, they might be treated as persons in one census, and as property in the next, and so on interchangeably. The suggestion of the principle, however, which seemed to be a just one, and which grew out of the conflicting opinions entertained upon the question whether numbers of inhabitants are alone a just index of the wealth of a community, brought into view a very important doctrine, that had long been familiar to the American people; namely, that the right of representation ought to be conceded to every community on which a tax is to be imposed; or, as one of the maxims of the Revolutionary period expressed it, that "taxation and representation ought to go together." This doctrine was really applicable to the case, and capable of furnishing a principle that would alleviate the difficulty; for if it could be agreed that, in levying taxes upon a slaveholding State, the wealth that consisted in slaves should be included, the maxim itself demonstrated the propriety of giving as large a proportion of representation as the proportion of tax imposed; and if, in order to ascertain the representative right of the State, the slaves were to be counted as persons, and, in ascertaining the tax to be paid, they were to be counted as property, they would not require to be considered in both capacities under either branch of the rule. But in order to give the maxim this application, it would be necessary to concede that the numbers of the slaves and the free persons furnished a fair index of the wealth of one State, as it was necessary to admit that the numbers of its free inhabitants furnished a fair index of the wealth of another State. If the latter were to be assumed, and the taxation imposed upon a State were regulated by its numbers of people, upon the idea that such numbers fairly represented the wealth of the community, it was proper to apply the same principle to the slaves. If this principle were applied to the slaves when ascertaining the amount of taxes to be paid, it ought equally to be applied to them in ascertaining the numbers of representatives to be allowed to the State; otherwise, the value of the slaves must be ascertained in some other way, for the purposes of taxation; the value or wealth residing in other kinds of property must be ascertained in the same mode, or under the different rule of assuming numbers of inhabitants as its index; and the slaves must be excluded as persons from the representation, which they could only enhance by being treated as taxable property.
These further difficulties will appear, as we follow out the various steps taken for the purpose of applying the maxim which connects taxation with representation. The rule now under consideration, as the means of guiding the legislature in future distributions of the right of representation, was that they were to regulate it upon a ratio compounded of the wealth and numbers of inhabitants of the States. Gouverneur Morris now proposed to add to this, as a proviso, the correlative proposition, "that direct taxation shall be in proportion to representation." This was adopted; and it made the proposed rule of numbers and wealth combined applicable both to taxation and representation.
But in truth it was as difficult to apply the combined rule of wealth and numbers to the subject of taxation, as between the States, as it was to apply it to the right of representation. This was not the first time in the history of the Union that these two subjects had been considered, and had been found to be surrounded with embarrassments. In 1776, when the Articles of Confederation were framed, it became necessary to determine the proportion in which the quotas of contribution to the general treasury should be assessed upon the States. Two obvious rules presented themselves as alternatives; either to apportion the quotas upon an estimate of the wealth of the States, or to assume that numbers of inhabitants of every condition presented a fair index of the pecuniary ability of a State to sustain public burdens. Here again, however, under either of these plans, the question would arise as to the kind of property to be regarded in the basis of the assessment. Should the slaves be treated as part of the property of a slaveholding State, either by a direct computation, or by counting them as part of the population, which was to be considered as the measure of its wealth? Mr. John Adams forcibly maintained that they ought not to be regarded as subjects of federal taxation, any more than the free laborers of the Northern States; but that numbers of inhabitants ought to be taken, indiscriminately, as the true index of the wealth of each State; and that thus the slave would stand upon the same footing with the free laborer, both being regarded as the producers of wealth, and therefore that both should add to the quota of tax or contribution to be levied upon the State.[102] Mr. Chase,[103] on the other hand, contended that practically this rule would tax the Northern States on numbers only, while it would tax the Southern States on numbers and wealth conjointly, since the slaves were property as well as persons.