Mr. King in answer said, all persons born free were to be considered as freemen; and to make the idea of taxation by numbers more intelligible, said that five negro children of South Carolina, are to pay as much tax as the three Governors of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Mr. Gorham thought the proposed section much in favor of Massachusetts; and if it operated against any state, it was Pennsylvania, because they have more white persons bound than any other.

Judge Dana, in reply to the remark of some gentlemen, that the southern States were favored in this mode of apportionment, by having five of their negroes set against three persons in the eastern, the honorable judge observed, that the negroes of the southern States work no longer than when the eye of the driver is on them.  Can, asked he, that land flourish like this, which is cultivated by the hands of freemen?  Are not three of these independent freemen of more real advantage to a State, than five of those poor slaves?

Mr. Nasson remarked on the statement of the honorable Mr. King, by saying that the honorable gentleman should have gone further, and shown us the other side of the question.  It is a good rule that works both ways—­and the gentlemen should also have told us, that three of our infants in the cradle, are to be rated as high as five of the working negroes of Virginia.  Mr. N. adverted to a statement of Mr. King, who had said, that five negro children of South Carolina were equally rateable as three governors of New England, and wished, he said, the honorable gentleman had considered this question upon the other side—­as it would then appear that this State will pay as great a tax for three children in the cradle, as any of the southern States will for five hearty working negro men.  He hoped, he said, while we were making a new government, we should make it better than the old one:  for if we had made a bad bargain before, as had been hinted, it was a reason why we should make a better one now.

Mr. Dawes said, he was sorry to hear so many objections raised against the paragraph under consideration.  He thought them wholly unfounded; that the black inhabitants of the southern States must be considered either as slaves, and as so much property, or in the character of so many freemen; if the former, why should they not be wholly represented?  Our own State laws and Constitution would lead us to consider those blacks as freemen, and so indeed would our own ideas of natural justice:  if, then, they are freemen, they might form an equal basis for representation as though they were all white inhabitants.  In either view, therefore, he could not see that the northern States would suffer, but directly to the contrary.  He thought, however, that gentlemen would do well to connect the passage in dispute with another article in the Constitution, that permits Congress, in the year 1808, wholly to prohibit the importation of slaves,