Representation
6/16 Mr. WILSON: an inequality in it [representation] has ever been a poison contaminating every branch of
government. In Great Britain, where this poison has had a full operation, the security of private rights is owing
entirely to the purity of her tribunals of justice, the judges of which are neither appointed nor paid by a venal
parliament.
6/18 Mr. HAMILTON: Another destructive ingredient in the plan is that equality of suffrage which is so much
desired by the small States. It is not in human nature that Virginia and the large States should consent to it; or, if
they did, that they should long abide by it. It shocks too much all ideas of justice, and every human feeling.
6/29 DOCTOR JOHNSON: in one branch the people ought to be represented, in the other the States.
7/9 Mr. PATTERSON: He could regard negro slaves in no light but as property. They are no free agents, have
no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property, but on the contrary are themselves property, and like other
property entirely at the will of the master. Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of
his slaves? and if negroes are not represented in the States to which they belong, why should they be
represented in the General Government. What is the true principle of representation? It is an expedient by which
an assembly of certain individuals, chosen by the people, is substituted in place of the inconvenient meeting of
the people themselves. If such a meeting of the people was actually to take place, would the slaves vote? They
would not. Why then should they be represented? He was also against such an indirect encouragement of the
slave trade; observing that Congress, in their Act relating to the change of the eighth Article of Confederation,
had been ashamed to use the term "slaves," and had substituted a description.
7/10 Mr. GERRY: The larger the number [of representatives], the less the danger of their being corrupted. The
people are accustomed to and fond of, a numerous representation; and will consider their rights as better
secured by it
7/11 Mr. RANDOLPH: If a fair representation of the people be not secured, the injustice of the Government will
shake it to its foundations.
7/11 Mr. BUTLER insisted that the labor of a slave in South Carolina was as productive and valuable, as that of
a freeman in Massachusetts; that as wealth was the great means of defence and utility to the nation, they were
equally valuable to it with freemen; and that consequently an equal representation ought to be allowed for them
in a government which was instituted principally for the protection of property, and was itself to be supported by
property.
Mr. MASON could not agree to the motion, notwithstanding it was favourable to Virginia, because he thought it
unjust.
7/14 Mr. MADISON: representation was an expedient by which the meeting of the people themselves was
rendered unnecessary; and that the representatives ought therefore to bear a proportion to the votes which their
constituents, if convened, would respectively have.