extremely inconvenient: if unfixed, the legislature may use such a mode as will defeat the object, and perpetuate the inequality. He was always against such shackles on the legislature. They had been found very pernicious in most of the state constitutions. He dwelt much on the danger of throwing such a preponderance into the western scale; suggesting that, in time, the western people would out number the Atlantic States. He wished therefore to put it in the power of the latter to keep a majority of votes in their own hands. It was objected, he said, that, if the legislature are left at liberty, they will never readjust the representation. He admitted that this was possible, but he did not think it probable, unless the reasons against a revision of it were very urgent; and in this case it ought not to be done.
It was moved to postpone the proposition of Mr. Randolph, in order to take up the following, viz.: "that the committee of eleven, to whom was referred the report of the committee of five on the subject of representation, be requested to furnish the Convention with the principles on which they grounded the report;" which was disagreed to,—South Carolina alone voting in the affirmative.
Adjourned.
Wednesday, July 11.
In Convention.—Mr. Randolph's motion, requiring the legislature to take a periodical census, for the purpose of redressing inequalities in the representation, was resumed.
Mr. SHERMAN was against shackling the legislature too much. We ought to choose wise and good men, and then confide in them.
Mr. MASON. The greater the difficulty we find in fixing a proper rule of representation, the more unwilling ought we to be to throw the task from ourselves on the general legislature. He did not object to the conjectural ratio which was to prevail in the outset; but considered a revision from time to time, according to some permanent and precise standard, as essential to the fair representation required in the first branch. According to the present population of America, the northern part of it had a right to preponderate, and he could not deny it. But he wished it not to preponderate hereafter, when the reason no longer continued. From the nature of man, we may be sure that those who have power in their hands will not give it up, while they can retain it. On the contrary, we know that they will always, when they can, rather increase it. If the Southern States, therefore, should have three fourths of the people of America within their limits, the Northern will hold fast the majority of representatives. One fourth will govern the three fourths. The Southern States will complain; but they may complain from generation to generation without redress. Unless some principle, therefore, which will do justice to them hereafter, shall be inserted in the Constitution, disagreeable as the declaration was to him, he must declare he could neither vote for the system here, nor support it in his state. Strong objections had been drawn from the danger to the Atlantic interests
