h; but, being
human, the mind was not shocked at having the slaves reckoned as
population in fixing the basis of representation, though in reality they
only represented the masters' ownership. But nobody would have been at a
loss to see the absurdity of counting three fifths of the Northern ships
as population. Even a Webster Whig of sixty-five years later could,
perhaps, have understood that that was something more than an
"unimportant anomaly." There was no clearer-headed man in the
convention than Gouverneur Morris; yet he said that he was "compelled to
declare himself reduced to the dilemma of doing injustice to the
Southern States or to human nature, and he must do it to the former." C.
C. Pinckney of South Carolina declared that he was "alarmed" at such an
avowal as that. Yet had the question been one of counting three fifths
of the Northern ships in the enumeration of population, Morris would
have discovered no "dilemma," and Pinckney nothing to be "alarmed" at.
So palpable an outrage on common sense would have been merely laughed at
by both.

[Illustration: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney]

In reply to Pinckney, however, Morris grew bolder. "It was high time,"
he said, "to speak out." He came there "to form a compact for the good
of America. He hoped and believed that all would enter into such
compact. If they would not, he was ready to join with any States that
would. But as the compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the
Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States will never agree
to. It is equally vain for the latter to require what the other States
can never admit, and he verily believed the people of Pennsylvania will
never agree to a representation of negroes;" of negroes, he meant,
counted as human beings, not for their own representation, but, as ships
might be counted, for the increased representation of those who held
them as property. The next day he "spoke out" still more plainly. "If
negroes," he said, "were to be viewed as inhabitants, ... they ought to
be added in their entire number, and not in the proportion of three
fifths. If as property, the word 'wealth' was right,"--as the basis,
that is, of representation. The distinction that had been set up by
Madison and others between the Northern and Southern States he
considered as heretical and groundless. But it was persisted in, and "he
saw that the Southern gentlemen will not be satisfied unless they see
the way open to their gainin