[Mr. Green explained, but in so low a tone of voice, that the reporter could not catch his language.]

Mr. Mercer regretted that he had been unable to hear distinctly the explanation of the gentleman from Culpeper, but from the few words which had reached him, he inferred it to be his intention to adopt the system of South Carolina, and to divide the State into two sorts of election districts.

[Mr. Green having changed his seat in the Hall, again rose for explanation. He explained it to be his plan to take the white population of the State and the population of each county. Apply the rule. Population gives to representation, in proportion to numbers. See the number of representatives required. In like manner, take the whole taxes of the State, and those of each county, if the taxes give the like rule for the county, add them together, and that is the rule.]

Mr. M. thought this plan would only serve to increase the difficulty. To what portion of a representative will Warwick with her annual taxes at $500, and her white population of 620 persons, be entitled? The objection still applies, notwithstanding the explanation that a freeholder, or lawful voter of the Commonwealth, will be weighed in the same scales, with the taxes, he may chance to contribute to the wants or the caprice of the Legislature, and find himself balanced against the fraction of a single dollar.

Were a submission to such degradation, all that was required by this ingenious political composition of men and money, it would be possible, though it might be difficult to endure it patiently. But, is it possible to derive, from such materials, any equitable or stable proportion, or balance of political power, between the different sections, or interests, as they are called, of this Commonwealth, or, indeed, of any other, with which we are acquainted? I know its operation in South Carolina, said Mr. M. only so far as its details are disclosed in her Constitution. Let us turn to it. By this, it is provided, that sixty-two members of the more numerous, I will call it popular branch of her Legislature, shall be distributed among her pre-existing election districts, in number forty-four, from reference to their white inhabitants; and sixty-two among the same districts, from reference to "the amount of all taxes raised by the Legislature, whether direct or indirect, or of whatever species, paid in each, deducting therefrom, all taxes paid on account of property, held in any other district, and adding thereto, all taxes, elsewhere paid, on account of property held in such district." To give effect to this principle of representation, it is farther provided, that there shall be an enumeration of the people once in every ten years, and that, in every apportionment of representation, which shall take place, after the first, "the amount of taxes shall be estimated from the average of the ten preceding years:" "and the first apportionment shall be founded on the tax of the preceding year, excluding from the amount thereof, the whole produce of the tax on sales at public auction."

He had attended, Mr. M. said, the inore closely, to these provisions, in order to ascertain, what portion to a House of one hundred and twenty-four members, would fall to the share of the city of Charleston. This city had, of the former House of Representatives of the State, including the parishes of St. Philips' and St. Michael's, fifteen members out of one hundred and twenty-four. The auction duties of South Carolina, there can be but little doubt, are paid chiefly, if not solely, in Charleston. They were not to be computed at all, in the first apportionment of representation, that of 1810; but the very exception, as well as the antecedent language of her Constitution, shews that they were to be reckoned, in every subsequent apportionment, founded on the taxes of the preceding ten years. They must have been computed, therefore, in 1820. The present representation of this city, in the House of Repre sentatives of South Carolina, I have yet to learn; but if any part of it is founded on these auction duties, since her example is invoked to the aid of the amendment, in discussion, I ask if she is entitled to it on any principle which would not give to the citizens of Philadelphia, or New York, a like claim to representation, over and above their fair proportion to members in the Legislatures of their respective States? The extent of the auction duties annually collected in Charleston, is unknown to me; but the auction duties of Philadelphia, I believe, constitute a third of the entire revenue of Pennsylvania, whose State Government is sustained without any other tax whatever, except upon the dividends of her banks, and on collateral inheritances, devises and bequests. These taxes, together with her share of the annual dividends, accruing on her several road, bridge, canal, and bank stocks, make up the sum total of the public income, applied to the disbursements of a State Government, where neither a land nor a poll tax exists. More than a moiety of it arises in Philadelphia.

Similar views apply to New York. The auction duties levied in her great emporium, largely exceed a moiety of our State revenue, and are established and set apart for a special purpose, by an express provision of her Constitution.

The only tax we have in Virginia, analogous to this, is one on merchants' licenses; and both have a close affinity, in their principles and operation, to the impost duties of the United States. They are all levied at the marts of commerce,-all chargeable

upon the commodities which enter into that commerce. They are, consequently, all paid, neither by the importer nor the vender,-neither by the auctioneer nor the merchant,-who are but the collectors of the tax, and charge a profit on their labour. They are all paid, in fine, by the consumer, who, for the opportunity of paying them, this amendment would require of him to surrender, not only the price in money of the articles which he purchased, but a most undue and enormous advance of political power, to his superiors, the tax-paying merchant and auctioneer. Apply this amendment to the condition of Pennsylvania and New York, and their chief cities would govern those States. These new heads of a monied aristocracy, the auctioneers, who pay, by far, the largest share of the taxes to the State, would, in the several State Governments, far out-rank the regular merchant, whose principal dues pass through the Collectors of the Customs, to the Treasury of the Federal Government; and, consequently, neither augment his own political power, nor that of his neighbours, however large they may be, and actually are.

If the payment of a tax, gives a right to a proportionate share of the power which levies it, my constituents have a fair claim to representation in the Legislatures of New York and Pennsylvania, since they pay no small share of these auction duties. Sir, said Mr. M. the salt tax of New York, a State excise, is also set apart, by her Constitution, for a special purpose. Being twelve and a half cents on the bushel, and the quantity made, about 1,200,000 bushels, it does not fall short of $120,000 per annum, and being levied and collected on Lake Onondaga, near the town of Salina, it should entitle the inhabitants of that vicinity, to a very large portion' of the political power of that great and flourishing State.

During the last war, we endeavoured to levy a similar tax in the counties of Washington and Kanawha; but with less success. Should the political weight of our several counties, be hereafter dependent on the amount of taxes they may severally pay, as the gentleman from Culpeper proposes, whatever the salt-makers may think of the renewal of that tax, the politicians and the people of those counties, might over-rule these objections, for the sake of governing the rest of the Commonwealth, by this newly-invented political power.

It must now be apparent, Mr. Chairman, that the district in which a particular tax is collected, may not be the district of the people by whom it is paid, and consequently that nothing would be more absurd than to rest the apportionment of political power on any such basis.

Indeed, the tax which is paid on a particular subject will have its locality, if I may be allowed the expression, determined, altogether, by the mode in which it is levied. The Supreme Court of the United States has defined a tax upon carriages, to be a tax on expenditure, and therefore an indirect tax, and to be the same in character, whether paid by the maker or the user of the carriage. Now, the maker and the user may live in the same Commonwealth many miles apart. If, however, the tax be paid by the maker, he would have credit for it; if by the user, it would inure to his benefit. To whom should the right of suffrage attach? If it attach to neither, it would seem to vest in the vehicle itself, and to suggest a similar difficulty to that propounded by Dr. Franklin, who, commenting on the case of a inan, whose right to vote depended on the tax which he had paid on his ass, inquired after the death of the animal, and the consequent loss of the vote of his owner, whether the vote had been in the

ass or the man.

It is impossible, Mr. Chairman, said Mr. M. to judge how far the rule of apportionment, adopted by South Carolina, would suit our condition, without knowing how it operates on her own. What is the character and operation of her system of taxa

tion?

A similar rule is said to prevail in the apportionment of the Senators of MassachuBetts and New Hampshire, under their respective State Constitutions. He had been informed, that no State tax had been levied in Massachusetts for seven years past, and he thought it highly probable that the same state of affairs, in the frugal Commonwealth of New Hampshire, would prevent a rule of apportionment, however offensive in theory, from exciting the public indignation. A rule, wholly inoperative, would be obnoxious to no one.

It can be readily perceived, that if applied to Pennsylvania, or New York, or even to Maryland, it would so far from restraining the political influence of the chief cities of these States, to a measure short of the just proportion of the number of their citizens in the scale of the population of their respective States, it would enable those cities by a combination of numbers and wealth to govern, without any control, beyond their corporation limits. And yet, this is one of the very evils against which the member from Chesterfield, the eloquent advocate of the amendment, is desirous to guard this Commonwealth: A Commonwealth, whose territory is so intersected by numerous rivers, that an overgrown market is not likely to spring up in its bosom.

Mr. M. said, he had considered these imperfections of the basis of representation, submitted by the amendment, arising from the nature of taxation, considered as an

instrument for raising any given revenue required by the exigencies of the Commonwealth.

But if these exigencies shall vary between different periods of time, how unstable is this basis, and especially if the pressure of the public burthens shall grow more and more unequal, as they grow or decline in weight.

In Maryland there is no State tax: the expenses of her Government are defrayed out of the income of a public capital already acquired. The revenue of the two great canals of New York, the work of but a few years, reaches already near a million of dollars, and will shortly release that Coinmonwealth, which has now neither a land nor a poll tax, from the necessity of imposing any tax whatever on her

citizens.

Such a principle of representation, as that, for which our opponents contend, would induce, under such circumstances, the imposition and distribution of taxes for the sake of power merely. On the plan of Carolina, half the political power of the State might be secured by the exercise of very little ingenuity, to a minority of the election districts, and with it the means of preserving it forever in the same hands.

We have sought as yet in vain to secure from misapplication, and to prescribe the use of the two great funds of the Commonwealth. If the new Constitution shall be silent on this subject, what will prevent a majority of a future Legislature from applying them to reduce the pressure of the taxes on one portion of the Commonwealth, with a view to its Government in all other respects, by a minority of the people, or those who lead such minority? Those funds are abundantly sufficient for any such purpose, and the amendment, if adopted, will furnish the opportunity so to abuse

them.

Not only would every reduction of the taxes which affected their relative pressure affect the proposed apportionment of representation, but every augmentation of them.

In this view of the subject a new principle requires to be developed. A considerable augmentation of revenue cannot often be effected without increasing particular taxes on those subjects already taxed, which will bear augmentation, nor sometimes, without adding new subjects to the existing list of taxes.

War inevitably gives rise to both these necessities, by reducing or suspending some branches of private revenue, and supplying others, before unused or unknown.

The burthen of sustaining a foreign war, it is true, has been cast by the Federal Constitution upon another Government; but it cannot be forgotten, by any member of this Convention, that it had been found necessary to double the revenue of the Commonwealth during the late war, and to incur a considerable debt for its defence, part of which remains yet unpaid Can any man venture to predict, that a similar necessity will not again arise? Should he do so, would this Committee confide in the prediction and found a provision in our Constitution upon it? No practical Statesman will believe that to be impossible which has actually happened, or reject the council which would provide for its recurrence.

Should an attempt be made to remedy the inequality of taxation, arising from war, or national distress, by averaging with a view to future representation, the taxes of a given period, according to the scheme of South Carolina: the effect of any war which varies the proportions of the public burthens, borne by the citizens of the same Commonwealth, will subsist in their representation, long after peace shall have been restored, and the inequality shall have ceased.

A review of our own system of taxation, both before and since the formation of our present Constitution, would supply all the facts necessary to sustain the positions I

have assuined.

Prior to the war of 1756, called in Europe the Silesian war, from its object, and the seven years war, from its duration, and in America, the French war, from the foe whom it brought upon the western frontier of this Commonwealth, the only revenue of Virginia had been derived from a poll tax. The first land tax was laid in 1777, and was an ad valorem tax, the same in amount with that upon slaves-and these were then the only subjects of taxation. To these, before the last war, had been added taxes on horses, ordinaries, merchants' licenses, and law process.

The last war not only required a large augmentation of the taxes, on all these subjects, but the addition of a number which I will not fatigue the Committee by enumerating. Since the war the extraordinary subjects of taxation, have been released, but the pre-existing proportions of tax on the old subjects has not been restored. Allow me briefly to run over these changes with the date of their occurrence. In 1809 the land tax was 48 cents on the hundred dollars, or supposed value, according to the act of 1787. From 1816 to 1819 the land tax was 75 cents on the hundred dollars. In 1820 it was reduced by the new equalizing land law, the price paid by the West, for equalizing the representation of the Senate, to 12 cents for every hundred dollars of actually assessed value. In 1821 it was brought down to 9 cents upon the same estimate; at which it remained till the last year, when it was again reduced to 8 cents,

more than fifty per cent of the tax of 1820, having been struck off in eight years, and the land tax of 1829 made to bear to the land tax prior to the last equalizing land law an apparent ratio of one only, to more than 9.

In 1809, before the war, the tax on slaves above twelve years of age was 4 cents; in 1815 it was raised by the war to 80 cents, in 1819 reduced to 70 cents, in 1821 to 53 cents, in 1828 to 47 cents, and the last reduction brought it down to 40 cents, or 4 cents less than its amount prior to the war.

The tax on horses for several years prior to the last war was 8 cents. In 1815 it mounted up to 20 cents. In 1819 it was 18 cents; in 1821, 134 cents; in 1823, 12 cents, and it is now 10 cents, or twenty-five per cent. more than it was prior to the war. The war besides adding more than forty specific taxes to the three I have enumerated, raised essentially the proportions between those of ordinary use.

It greatly increased the ratio of the land and horse tax to the slave tax. The relative product of the taxes on lands, slaves and horses in 1809, was 141,000; 90,000, and 38,000 respectively. In 1816, 238,000; 161,000, and 40,000. In 1e29, 175,000; 97,000, and 33,000 respectively. When the revenue from these three subjects stood highest, that is, after the equalizing law took effect in 1819, their proportions were 274,000; 163,000, and $52,000. Their proportions in the last year were 175,000; 97,000, and $33,000.

The land tax, it will be seen, has been gaining on the amount of the slave tax since 1809. Since when $34,000 has been added to the gross amount of the land tax, and $7,000 to the amount of the slave tax.

While these variations in the total amount of the taxes levied on the old subjects of taxation, have not been strongly marked, except during the continuance of war, the proportion paid by the several counties of the State have been more diversified.

The taxes of Loudoun paid into the State Treasury, in 1815, amounted to the sum of $12,885. Those of the county of Warwick to $1,285. or very near a tenth part of that amount. In each of the years of 1823 and 1824, Warwick paid only $500 and Loudoun $9,500. In the last year, Warwick paid $526, and Loudoun $10,507. Thus the proportion of taxes actually paid into the Treasury, by these counties which have, notwithstanding, an equal representation in the House of Delegates, was, in 1815, ten to one; and is, now, very near twenty to one. The proportion having varied in the ratio of very near two to one.

During the last war, nearly fifty specific taxes were added to three subjects of ordinary State revenue. Among the former were excises on salt, iron, lead and manufactured tobacco, objects all of limited production, and while consumed every where, taxed only where made.

They suggest one view of this subject which ought not to be omitted. It is that by resting the representation of the people of this Commonwealth on the basis of taxa tion and numbers, we place their relative political power over the operations of their own State Government, under the control of the Congress of the United States.

To develope this argument, it is necessary to refer to the Federal Constitution which gives to the National Legislature exclusively, the power of imposing duties on foreign imports, and a concurrent authority with the several States to tax every thing else

within their limits.

Should Congress prohibit public auctions of foreign goods, as they have been earnestly entreated to do by the resident merchants of all our great cities, what would become of the revenue of New-York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, from this source? And should the revenue disappear, what of that portion of the representation of Charleston derived from the auction tax? May it not be said that those States who tax a particular mode of selling foreign commodities immediately after they are landed, while they are expressly debarred from taxing their importation, trench more directly on the powers of the Federal Government than that Government has done, upon the natural distribution of labour and capital within the several States by the imposition of a tariff for the encouragement of domestic manufactures?

Nor is it the direct action of the fiscal regulations of the United States, in particular branches of State revenue, to which I singly allude: the whole system of federal taxation exerts an indirect but constant control over all the subjects which a State can tax. Were the United States, for example, to repeal the 20 cent duty on salt, what would become of New-York excise on that commodity, an excise which enhances its price, not only to the people of that State, but of the Western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia?

I trust, said Mr. M. that I need not adjure the Committee to exclude, if practicable, the action of the General Government, whether direct or indirect, on the representation of the people of Virginia in the Legislative Department of their State Gov

ernment.

Had such a basis of representation obtained in the Federal Legislature, in lieu of federal numbers, what now would be the relative power of New-York, to the rest of the Union; and of the city of New-York to the rest of that great commercial State.

The duties there paid would overturn every just balance of political power, and overwhelm, in the vortex of a monied aristocracy, the liberty and happiness, not of that city only, but of the whole Union.

Before Mr. M. concluded his remarks, the Committee rose, and the House adjourned to meet to-inorrow, at 11 o'clock.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1829.

The Convention met at eleven o'clock, and was opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Lee of the Episcopal Church.

Mr. MERCER resuined:

Having endeavoured, with what success it is for the Committee to determine, to shew that the basis of representation proposed by the gentleman from Culpeper, (Mr. Green,) if practicable, is unstable, unjust, and inexpedient, I beg leave to recur to the original resolution of the Legislative Committee, in order to demonstrate that it founds the representation of the people, on its only proper basis.

This course I deem the more necessary, since the friends of the amendment have sought to sustain it, rather by opposing the basis contained in the resolution, than by enforcing the justice, or expediency of the amendment itself. Their reasoning has shewn, if it has proved any thing, that the entire slave population of the State, or three-fifths of it at least, should be computed in any new apportionment of representation which shall be made.

The resolution asserts, that this apportionment should have reference exclusively to the numbers of the free white population of the Commonwealth.

Referring to free white population, alone, the Legislative Committee have designed to reject any computation whatever of slaves. Although no gentleman has so far offended the public sentiment in terms, as absolutely to confound slaves with freemen, yet in their arguments, in favour of a compound basis, they have laid great stress on the protection which a representation of slaves would afford to this species of property.

The gentleman from Chesterfield, (Mr. Leigh,) has gone so far as to urge the computation of the slave population, in whole or in part, on grounds of authority, of justice, and of expediency.

His leading authority is deduced from the articles of "Confederation and perpetual Union" among the States, which gave place to the present Constitution of the United States, wherein, three-fifths of the slave population are added to the white, to compose a standard of direct taxation and representation.

One of my purposes is to shew that these authorities are inconclusive in themselves, or inapplicable to the present question.

The honourable member insisted on a former occasion, that the articles of Confederation did actually authorise a computation of three-fifths of the slave population of the South. Had this been true, it would not have warranted the use of the fact as an authority in fixing the basis of representation in the Constitution of Virginia. The articles of Confederation formed a compact, not between individuals, but sovereign States, who regarded themselves as mutually independent of each other. This compact, like a treaty, could be ratified, only by the express assent of all the parties to it; which was not obtained, until the accession of Maryland, in March, 1781. In the Congress, which that compact provided, for the exercise of the authority of the United States, perfect equality of power subsisted among the States. The sense of a part indeed, was to govern the whole body, but this sense was taken by the votes, not of individuals, (any one, or several of whom, might represent a State) but of States, each State having one vote and one only. As the articles of Confederation could be ratified, so, they could be altered, or amended, only by the concurrent assent of all the States who were parties to them.

No rule of pecuniary contribution, in such a Government, for the power to tax did not exist, could therefore, have the remotest relation to any basis of representation whatever. The States were expected to contribute to the common expenditure according to their respective ability. Their representation was equal. The 8th of those articles, provided a common treasury, and required it to be supplied, by the several States, in proportion to the estimated value of all the lands granted in each State, with the buildings and improvements upon them. Until 1781, however, this like all the other articles of Confederation, had no validity whatever.

In the interim, the revolutionary Government sustained itself, by loans, and by the issue of paper money, till from the excessive issue of this paper, it lost all value, and ceased at length to circulate.