wer.
h. The model on which the federal government was built.

Section 2. _The Federal Congress._

[Sidenote: The House of Representatives.]
The federal House of Representatives is descended, through the state
houses of representatives, from the colonial assemblies. It is an
assembly representing the whole population of the country as if it were
all in one great state. It is composed of members chosen every other
year by the people of the states. Persons in any state who are qualified
to vote for state representatives are qualified to vote for federal
representatives. This arrangement left the power of regulating the
suffrage in the hands of the several states, where it still remains,
save for the restriction imposed in 1870 for the protection of the
southern freedmen. A candidate for election to the House of
Representatives must be twenty-five years old, must have been seven
years a citizen of the United States, and must be an inhabitant of the
state in which he is chosen.

[Sidenote: The three fifths compromise.]
As the Federal Congress is a taxing body, representatives and direct
taxes are apportioned among the several states according to the same
rule, that is, according to population. At this point a difficulty
arose in the Convention as to whether slaves should be counted as
population. If they were to be counted, the relative weight of the
slave states in all matters of national legislation would be much
increased. The northern states thought, with reason, that it would
be unduly increased. The difficulty was adjusted by a compromise
according to which five slaves were to be reckoned as three persons.
Since the abolition of slavery this provision has become obsolete, but
until 1860 it was a very important factor in American history.[7]

In the federal House of Representatives the great states of course
have much more weight than the small states. In 1790 the four largest
states had 32 representatives, while the other nine had only 33. The
largest state, Virginia, had 10 representatives to 1 from Delaware.
These disparities have increased. In 1880, out of thirty-eight states
the nine largest had a majority of the house, and the largest state,
New York, had 34 representatives to 1 from Delaware.

[Footnote 7: See my _Critical Period_, pp. 257-262.]

[Sidenote: The Connecticut compromise]
This feature of the House of Representatives caused
the smaller states in the Convention to oppose the whole scheme of