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Sir, the argument would be a good one if the premises which support it were cor rect. But it is not true that the authors of the Declaration of Rights established the anomalous Government under which we have lived these fitty years and more. There can be no grosser error than to suppose that the Constitution of Virginia was formed in 1776. Its two great distinctive features, the sectional, and the 4 scratic had been given to it a century before. The equal representation of the countres, which was the remote cause of its sectional character, was established, in 1661, by a General Assembly representing a population residing exclusively in the tide-water country, and consequently, at that time, homogeneous in character and identical in interest. The limitation of suffrage to freeholders which gave to it an aristocratic character, was imposed on the Colony in 1677, without any act of Assembly, by a letter of instructions from the King of England to his Governor in Virginia, backed and enf reed by two regiments of British soldiers, who had been sent to the Colony for the expres purpose of suppressing a popular insurrection. At the ara of the revolution, then, these two provisions had been the constitutional law of the Colony for more than one hundred years. The freeholders had learned to pride themselves on their superior" power and privileges, and the smaller counties on their equality with the larger. The body of the people were reconciled by habit to their actual condition.

What, then, was the situation in which the framers of the Constitution were placed ?— While they framed that instrument they were almost within hearing of the thunder of hostile cannon. The invader was at the door. They were in continual danger of being driven from the very hall of legislation by the bayonets of the enemy. The whole undivided physical force of the country was barely sufficient to defend it against the superior force of a foreign enemy. It was utterly impossible, under such creumstances, to pull down, and erect anew, the whole fabric of Government. And it would have been to the last degree unwise and impolitic, at such a fearful crisis, to distract the minds of the people by attempting a new distribution and arrangement of political power. It would have been the very height of folly, at such a crisis, to create disaffection in the minds of the freeholders, by stripping them of their exclusive powers, and to exasperate the smaller counties by degrading them from the rank which they had held under the royal Government. In leaving the freeholders and the counties as they found them, the framers of the Constitution bowed to the supreme law of necessity, and acted like wise and practical statesmen. Weak and unstable, then, is the argument which infers the unpractical character of the principles contained in the Declaration of Rights from the inconsistency of the actual Government. formed, with those principles. The very language resorted to in disposing of a subject of such vital importance as the regulation of the right of suffrage, the brief and summary way in which it is disposed of, would shew, in the absence of all other evidence, that it was a subject which the framers of the Constitution scarcely dared to touch- The right of suffrage shaft remain as at present exercised."

No, Sir, it was not reserved for us to discover the inconsistency between their theoretical principles, and their practical regulations. They saw it themselves, and deplored it. In the very heat of the war which was waged for these abstractions"-in the hurly-burly of the conflict, one statesinan, at least, was found, to point out those inconsistencies, and to urge home on the people of Virginia the "new and unheard of" principle, that in the apportionment of representation, regard should be had to the white population only. As early as 1761, Mr. Jefferson exhorted the people of Virginia, in the most earnest and impressive language, to reduce the principle to practice, "so soon as leisure should be afforded them, for intrenching, within good forms, the rights for which they had bled."

From that time to this, the spirit of reform has never slept. From that time to this, the friends of liberty have continually lifted up their voices against the inequ›lity and injustice of our system of Government. Incessantly baffled and defeated, they have not abandoned their purpose; and after a struggle of fifty years, that purpose seems at length on the eve of accomplish nent. The Representatives of the people of Virginia have at length assembled in Convention, to revise the Constitution of the State. A special committee of this Convention has recommended, among other measures of reform, the adoption of a resolution,

"That in the apportionment of representation, in the House of Delegates, regard should be had to white population exclusively."

It is this resolution which has called forth the denunciations of the gentleman from Chesterfield. It is this proposition, "new in the history of our Government, if not throughout the world; new certainly to him," which he calls on us to support.

Sir, I have ventured to assert, in the cominencement of the remarks which I have had the honour to address to the Committee, that this proposition, so far from being "new and unheard of," is but a reiteration, a practical enforcement, of those principles of political law which were solemnly announced by the fathers of the revolution, in that noble paper, the "Declaration of the Rights of the people of Virginia, which

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rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of Government. I proceed to redeem the pledge.

The Bill of Rights declares, that the people are the only legitimate source and fountain of political power.-The resolution of the Committee affirms this doctrine, by proposing, that in apportioning representation, or political power, regard shall be had to the people exclusively. Not to wealth, not to overgrown sectional interests, not to the supposed rights of the counties; but to the white population; to the people only. The Bill of Rights asserts the political equality of the citizens.-The resolution proposes to give to that principle a practical existence in our Government, by abolishing the inveterate abuse of the equal representation of unequal counties, and equalizing, as nearly as may be, the electoral districts throughout the Commonwealth, on the basis of free white population alone.

The Bill of Rights pronounces the jus majoris to be the law of all free communities, by attributing to the majority of a community, the power to reform, alter or abolish, at its will and pleasure, the very Government itself, and consequently the lesser power of deciding, without appeal, in all matters of ordinary legislation --The resolu tion proposes to give practical effect to the jus majoris, by making each Delegate the representative of an equal number of the people, so that the voice of a majority of the Delegates, will be the voice of a majority of the people. It proposes, in short, to establish that beautiful harmony between our theoretical principles and our practical regulations; the want of which, has been, for fifty years, the reproach of Virginia. The resolution of the Committee, then, proposes no new and unheard of scheme; no innovation on the established principles of ur Government. It calls on you to listen to the warning voice of the fathers of the revolution, who, in this despised "declaration," have told you," that no free Government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." But the accordance of the resolution with these great fundamental principles, has not obtained for it, the approbation of the gentleman from Culpeper, (Judge Green.) He proposes to amend it by striking out the word "exclusively," and adding the words "and taxation combined;" so that the resolution, as amended, would be,

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That in the apportionment of representation in the House of Delegates, regard should be had to white population and taxation combined."

It will be perceived, at once, that the object of this amendment, is to substitute for the principle of representation contained in the resolution of the Committee, one of a totally new and different character. It proposes a mixed or compound basis of representation, the elements of which are property and people, in lieu of the simple basis of people only. For the total amount of taxation does, and must, bear a just proportion to the total amount of property, the possession of which constitutes the ability to pay. The direct tendency, then, of this amendment, is to give political power to the wealthy in proportion to their wealth, and to inflict political insignificance on the poor in proportion to their poverty. To confer on an electoral district, containing few electors but great wealth, equal power with another district containing many electors but little wealth. To give to the few, who are rich, a control over the many who are poor. So that if Stephen Girard, the great millionaire of the north, were to become a citizen of Virginia, and fiscal ingenuity could reach his abounding wealth, the direct or apparent operation of this amendment, would be to augment incalculably, the political power of the county he should select as his residence, while its real effect would probably, if not certainly, be, to confer all the accumulated mass of power, thus artificially produced, on Stephen Girard himself. If Richmond, in the vicissitudes of human affairs, should chance at a future day, to attain the opulence which is even now possessed by the commercial metropolis of the Union, the operation of the amendment would be, to give it uncontrolled power over the legislation of the Com monwealth:

But, Sir, without commenting further on the practical operation of the proposed amendment, let us apply to it the same test to which we have subjected the resolution of the Committee. Does it accord with the principles of the " Declaration of Rights;” with the principles to which the gentleman from Culpeper, in common with us all, has given, but yesterday, the sanction of his approving vote?

It will be perceived, on the slightest examination, that it violates, not one only of those principles, which I have mentioned, but every one.

1. It repudiates the doctrine that the people are the only legitimate source and fountain of political power, and that "all power is derived from the people," and makes property one of the sources of power, and declares it to be derived, in part, from property.

2. It denies the correctness of the principle, that all the electors in the Commonwealth are equal in political rights, by conferring on a small number of wealthy electors, congregated in one electoral district, the same power that it confers on a large number of poor electors, congregated in another electoral district.

3. It subverts the jus majoris, the third great principle alluded to, and which is, in fact, but a corollary from the first, that the sovereignty is vested in the body of the people, and substitutes for it the control of the wealthy few; or in other words, the most odious, pernicious and despicable of all aristocracies-an aristocracy of wealth. And for what purpose, I pray you, are we thus to dilapidate the very foundations of our free institutions?-For what purpose are we to make this retrograde movement in the science of Government, and in the practical institutions of our country, which should rather keep pace with the improve.nents of that science, and the march of intellect?-While human liberty is making a progress, which, though slow, is yet certain, even in countries where the jus divinum of Kings is still the prevailing doctrine, why should we alone run counter to the spirit of the age, and disavow and repudiate the doctrines consecrated by the blood of our fathers?-While most of the old, and all the new Republics of this extensive confederacy, are carrying out the principle of the sovereignty of the people to its full extent, why should we alone, seek to narrow, and limit, and restrain its operation?-What mighty good is to be attained by this abandonment of the principles of the revolution?

The members of this Committee, in general, are left to imagine the objects and views of the learned and distinguished gentleman who has proposed the amendment in question. For though parliamentary usage, so far as I understand it, imposed upon him the task of developing the principles of his amendment, and though we were regularly notified yesterday, in the manner in which such notices are usually given, that he would proceed, to-day, to the performance of that duty, he has pursued a different course, and the friends of the resolution reported by the Select Committee, have been invited, or rather challenged, by the gentleman from Chesterfield, to commence the discussion.

Having been myself a member of that Committee, however, and having heard the arguments by which the same amendment was there sustained, I will endeavor to perform the duty of the mover by stating, and my own by answering them.

It is alleged, then, Sir, that the principles of Government contained in the Declaration of Rights, I mean those elevated and elevating principles which, in an assembly of Virginia Statesmen, I have this day been compelled to defend, are little better than mere abstractions. That whether they are correct or not, as "abstract principles," there is a great practical principle, wholly overlooked in the resolution of the Select Committee, of vital and paramount importance. The principle in question, and the argument by which it is sustained, when broadly and fairly developed, amount

to this:

1. That the security of property is one of the most essential elements of the prosperity and happiness of a community, and should be sedulously provided for by its institutions.

2. That men naturally love property, and the comforts and advantages it will pur

chase.

3. That this love of wealth is so strong, that the poor are the natural enemies of the rich, and feel a strong and habitual inclination to strip them of their wealth, or, at least, to throw on them alone all the burthens of society.

4. That the poor, being more numerous in every community than all the classes above them, would have the power, as well as the inclination, thus to oppress the rich, if admitted to an equal participation with them in political power; and

5. That it is therefore necessary to restrain, limit and diminish the power of this natural majority; of this many-headed and hungry monster, the many, by some artificial regulation in the Constitution, or fundamental law, of every community. And if this be not done, either directly, by limitations on the right of suffrage, or indirectly, by some artificial distribution of political power, in the apportionment of representation, like that contained in the amendment, property will be invaded, all the multiplied evils of anarchy will ensue, till the society, groaning under the yoke of unbridled democracy, will be driven to prefer to its stormy sway, the despotic Government of a single master. And this is said to be the natural death of the Government of numbers.

Sir, if this statement of the argument be a little over-coloured by imputing to those who advance it epithets which they are too prudent to use, it is nevertheless, like all good caricatures, a striking likeness.

To this argument I answer that, like most unsound arguments, it is founded on a bold assumption of false premises. It is founded on the assumption that men are, by nature, robbers, and are restrained from incessant invasions of the rights of each other, only by fear or coercion. But, is this a just picture of that compound creature man? Sir, I conceive it to be a libel on the race, disproved by every page of its history. If you will look there you will find that man, though sometimes driven by stormy passions to the commission of atrocious crimes, is by nature and habit neither a wolf nor a tiger. That he is an affectionate, a social, a patriotic, a conscientious and a religious creature. In him, alone, of all animals, has nature implanted the feeling

of affection for his kindred, after the attainment of maturity. This alone is a restraint on the excess of his natural desire for property as extensive as the ties of blood that bind him to his fellow man. Designing, moreover, that man shall live in communitier, where alone he can exist, nature has given to him the social feeling; the feeling of attachment to those around him. Intending that for the more perfect development of his high faculties, and for the attainment of the greatest degree of comfort and happiness of which he is susceptible, man should associate in nations, she implanted in him a feeling, the glorious displays of which have shed lustre around so many pages of his history. I mean the love of country or patriotism. Designing that he should attain to happiness through the practice of virtue, and in that way only, she erected in each man's bosom the tribunal of conscience, which passes in review all the actions of the individual, and pronounces sentence of condemnation on every manifest deviation from moral rectitude. To add sanctions to the decisions of conscience, she also implanted in his bosom an intuitive belief in the existence of an intelligence governing the world, who would reward virtue and punish vice in a future state of being. Man is therefore, by nature a religious creature, whose conduct is more or les regulated by the love or fear of the unknown governor of the Universe. Above all, the light of revealed religion has shone for ages on the world, and that Divine system of morals which commands us " to do unto others as we would have them do unto us," has shed its benign influence on the hearts of countless thousands, of the high and the low, the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor. But we are asked to believe that all these natural feelings, all these social affections, all these monitions of conscience, all these religious impressions, all these Christian charities, all these hopes of future rewards and fears of future punishments, are dead, and silent, and inoperative in the bosom of man. The love of property is the great engrossing passion which swallows up all other passions, and feelings, and principles; and this not in particular cases only, but in all men. The poor man is fatally and inevitably the enemy of the rich, and will wage a war of rapine against him, if once let loose from the restraints of the fundamental law. A doctrine monstrous, hateful and incredible!

But, Sir, if I were even to admit, for a moment, the truth of the revolting propositionthat the desire for property swallows up all the other feelings of man, does it follow that the aspirants after the enjoyments that property confers, will seek to attain their object in the manner which the argument in question supposes? If it be contended that man is a greedy and avaricious, it will, still, not be denied, that he is a reasoning and calculating, animal. When he desires to attain property it is in order that he may possess and enjoy it. But if he join in establishing the rule that the right of the strongest is the best right, what security has he that he, in his turn, will not soon be deprived of his property by some one stronger than himself? Sir, the very desire for property implies the desire to possess it securely. And he who has a strong desire to possess it, and a high relish, in anticipation, of the pleasure of enjoying it securely, will be a firm supporter of the laws which secure that possession, and a decided enemy to every systematic invasion of the rule of meum and tuum. In other words, man is sagacious enough to know that as a general and public rule of action, the maxim that honesty is the best policy, is the safest and best maxim. And when he deviates from that rule he always hopes that the violation will go undiscovered, or otherwise escape punishment. So true is this, that I am persuaded that if a nation could be found consisting exclusively of rogues and swindlers, there would not be found in the legislative code of that nation a systematic invasion of the right of property, such as the argument for the proposed amendment apprehends and seeks to provide against. Communities of men are sagacious enough to know and follow their real interest. And, S.r, I do not, and cannot believe that it is, or ever was the real interest of any class in the community, or of any community to commit gross and flagrant abuses of power, to disregard the monitions of conscience, to break down the barriers and obliterate the distinctions between right and wrong, and thus to involve society in all the horrors of anarchy. The principles of justice are the foundation of the social fabric, and rash and foolish is he and blind to his true interest, who undermines the foundation and tumbles the fabric in rums.

Thus far I have reasoned a pricri. But what are the lessons which history and experience teach us, in pursuing this enquiry?-We need not go far for examples. Let us look at the experience of our good old Commonwealth of Virginia. From the foundation of the Commonwealth the slave-holding population of Virginia has held the supreme power in the State. From the foundation of the Commonwealth there has existed and there still exists, a numerous population on our western frontier, who are comparatively destitute of slave-property, and whose wealth has ever consisted in cattle more than in any other description of property. Now if the argument of those who support the proposed amendment be a sound one, it would follow that as it is and always has been the interest (according to their views of interest) of the slaveholding population to shift from themselves, and to lay on others, the burthens of

Government, they would impose heavy taxes on the cattle, the property of the helpless minority, and oppress them by this and every other species of fiscal exaction. And yet the very reverse is the fact. For the slave-holders, invested with supreme power, and urged to its exercise by their "interest," have not only not overtaxed the cattle of their western brethren, but have, in fact, imposed on them, except at one period of danger and distress from foreign war, no tax at all, and when the pressure ceased the law imposing the tax was instantly repealed. And why-Because they Because they were governed by the principles of justice, and the feelings of honour. thought, and justly, that the people of the frontier, burthened as they were with "the first expenses of society," and engaged in laying the very foundations of the social fabric, could ill endure the additional burthen of a tax on their flocks and herds. Because the non-slave-holders of the west were at their mercy, and every feeling of honour and magnanimity forbade them to oppress the weak. I say, then, Sir, that the slave-holders of Virginia have shewn by their conduct in this particular case, the incorrectness of the theory which supposes man to be habitually governed by a blind and reckless cupidity; by the sordid feelings alone of his nature, to the exclusion of

the nobler.

I say, then, that arguing a priori, or taking for our guide the conduct of the slaveholders of Virginia, we are led to the conclusion, that the property of the wealthy would not be imperrilled, as gentlemen imagine, by entrusting the powers of Government to numbers, without regard to their wealth. That property would be abundantly secure, without investing its holders with a factitious power, derived from its possession. And that there is not the least necessity for the proposed innovation on the great principles of Government, asserted by our ancestors at the æra of the revolution._ But it is not in Virginia alone, that we see evidences of the futility of the apprehensions that are entertained for the safety of property. We have in the history of our Sister-Commonwealths, a rich fund of experience from whence we can draw arguments to illustrate the utter futility of these apprehensions. In fifteen States of the Union, representation is apportioned according to numbers alone, and wholly withou reference to property, or the wealth of the electors. In eight of these States citizenship is the sole qualification of the elector, and in the remaining seven the paymen of any tax, either local or general, is the only qualification superadded. The numbers, the needy many, have had the suprene control over the wealthy few, in some of those States for forty years, in some thirty, in some twenty; in some ten, and in some five. And what has been the practical result? Look at their situation, Sir, and look at ours. Do we not see among them the richest and most prosperous States of the Union? Has a single instance occurred of a Legislative invasion, by the poor, of the rights of the wealthy? Not one. The machine of Government has rolled smoothly on, and property has been found, as it ever will be found, able to protect itself, without constitutional barriers in the shape of odious privileges. So much for the general question, whether property is endangered by leaving the people in possession of their natural and equal rights

But I know, Sir, incidentally, that the mover of this amendment entertains the opinion, that the case of Virginia is, from peculiar circumstances, a case sui generis. His opinion is that the comparatively non-slave-holding population of Virginia, must ere long constitute, if it does not now constitute, a decided majority of the people, and that majority inhabiting a particular section of the State, alienated from their slaveholding fellow-citizens, by distance, localities and dissimilar views on questions of general policy. That it will be, or what amounts to the same thing, that they will suppose it to be, their interest to lay the burthens of Government almost exclusively on the slave property of their eastern brethren. And that it is, therefore, necessary to invest the slave-holding minority with factitious porcer, under the new Constitution, to enable it to protect itself against the injustice and oppression of the comparatively nonslave-holding majority.

Supposing the facts which I have just stated to be as he imagines them to be, I do not see any thing in the case stated, which takes it out of the operation of the prin ciples of security which I have supposed to exist in regard to property in general. He will not contend that the people of the west are less operated on by the principle of honor, by sentiments of justice, and by a sense of their real interests, than the people of the east.-And if this be so, his fears are groundless. For the people of the east, under similar circumstances, have repelled the base suggestions of a sordid and short-sighted interest, and have been governed by nobler and more enlarged views of expediency and right. But, Sir, his premises fail him.-Look at the map of Virginia, and at the tables of population which have this day been reported by the Auditor. He estimates the white population east of the Blue Ridge of mountains, at 362,745, and the white population west of those mountains at 319,516. The people of the east have, therefore, a majority of 43,229 over those of the west. I need scarcely, Sir, tell this assembly, that the whole white population east of the Ridge is a slave-holding population. The black population is even more denge along the

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