Mr. Chase (of Maryland) moved, that the quotas should be paid, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition but by that of the “white inhabitants.”  He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property; that this was in theory the true rule, but that from a variety of difficulties it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice.  The value of the property in every State could never be estimated justly and equally.  Some other measure for the wealth of the State must therefore be devised, some standard referred to which would be more simple.  He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained.  He therefore thought it the best mode we could adopt, with one exception only.  He observed that negroes are property, and as such cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those States where there are few slaves.  That the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c.; whereas, a Southern farmer lays out that same surplus in slaves.  There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern States on the farmer’s head and on his slave’s head, than the Northern ones on their farmer’s heads and the heads of their cattle.  That the method proposed would therefore tax the Southern States according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only:  that negroes in fact should not be considered as members of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.

Mr. John Adams (of Massachusetts) observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this article as an index of the wealth of the State, and not as subjects of taxation.  That as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves.  That in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves:  but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only.  What matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?  The ten laborers add as much wealth, annually to the State, increase its exports as much, in the one case as the other.  Certainly five hundred freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, than five hundred slaves.  Therefore the State in which are the laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves.  Suppose, by any extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one half the laborers of a State could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves,—­would the State be made the poorer, or the less able to pay taxes?  That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries,—­that of the fishermen, particularly, of the Northern States,—­is