These two
causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in
the United States. It did not lie between the large and small
States; it lay between the Northern and Southern; and, if any
defensive power were necessary, it ought to be mutually given to
these two interests."[105]
Mr. Rufus King, a distinguished member of the Convention from
Massachusetts, a few days afterward, said, to the same effect: "He was
fully convinced that the question concerning a difference of interests
did not lie where it had hitherto been discussed, between the great and
small States, but between the Southern and Eastern. For this reason he
had been ready to yield something, in the proportion of representatives,
for the security of the Southern.... He was not averse to giving them a
still greater security, but did not see how it could be done."[106]
The wise men who formed the Constitution were not seeking to bind the
States together by the material power of a majority; nor were they so
blind to the influences of passion and interest as to believe that paper
barriers would suffice to restrain a majority actuated by either or both
of these motives. They endeavored, therefore, to prevent the conflicts
inevitable from the ascendancy of a sectional or party majority, by so
distributing the powers of government that each interest might hold a
check upon the other. It was believed that the compromises made with
regard to representation--securing to each State an equal vote in the
Senate, and in the House of Representatives giving the States a weight
in proportion to their respective population, estimating the negroes as
equivalent to three fifths of the same number of free whites--would have
the effect of giving at an early period a majority in the House of
Representatives to the South, while the North would retain the
ascendancy in the Senate.
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