the alarms exceeded their cause, and that they would not abandon a country to which they were bound by so many strong and endearing ties. But should the deplored event happen, it would neither stagger his sentiments nor his duty. If the minority of the people of America refuse to coalesce with the majority on just and proper principles, if a separation must take place, it could never happen on better grounds. The votes of yesterday against the just principle of representation were as twenty-two to ninety of the people of America. Taking the opinions to be the same on this point,—and he was sure, if there was any room for change, it could not be on the side of the majority,—the question will be. Shall less than one fourth of the United States withdraw themselves from the Union, or shall more than three fourths renounce the inherent, indisputable, and unalienable rights of men, in favor of the artificial system of states? If issue must be joined, it was on this point he would choose to join it. The gentleman from Connecticut, in supposing that the preponderance secured to the majority in the first branch had removed the objections to an equality of votes in the second branch, for the security of the minority, narrowed the case extremely. Such an equality will enable the minority to control, in all cases whatsoever, the sentiments and interests of the majority. Seven states will control six: seven states, according to the estimates that had been used, composed twenty-four ninetieths of the whole people. It would be in the power, then, of less than one third to overrule two thirds, whenever a question should happen to divide the states in that manner. Can we forget for whom we are forming a government? Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called states? Will our honest constituents be satisfied with metaphysical distinctions? Will they, ought they to, be satisfied with being told, that the one third compose the greater number of states? The rule of suffrage ought on every principle to be the same in the second as in the first branch. If the government be not laid on this foundation, it can be neither solid nor lasting. Any other principle will be local, confined, and temporary. This will expand with the expansion, and grow with the growth, of the United States. Much has been said of an imaginary combination of three states. Sometimes a danger of monarchy, sometimes of aristocracy, has been charged on it. No explanation, however, of the danger has been vouchsafed. It would be easy to prove, both from reason and history, that rivalships would be more probable than coalitions; and that there are no coinciding interests that could produce the latter. No answer has yet been given to the observations of Mr. Madison on this subject. Should the executive magistrate be taken from one of the large states, would not the other two be thereby thrown into the scale with the other states? Whence, then, the danger of monarchy? Are the people of the three large states more aristocratic than those of the small ones? Whence, then, the danger of aristocracy from their influence? It is all a mere illusion of names. We talk of states, till we forget what they are composed of. Is a real and fair majority the natural
