en or money, is, in every view,
a system of imbecility in the Union, and of inequality and injustice
among the members.

The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptionable
part of the Confederation. Every idea of proportion and every rule of
fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to
Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts,
or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the
national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North
Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican
government, which requires that the sense of the majority should
prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a
majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated
America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the
plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this
majority of States is a small minority of the people of America;(3) and
two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon
the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to
submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The
larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving
the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due
importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible
to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It
is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last.
The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare
depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not
relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration.

It may be objected to this, that not seven but nine States, or
two thirds of the whole number, must consent to the most important
resolutions; and it may be thence inferred that nine States would
always comprehend a majority of the Union. But this does not obviate
the impropriety of an equal vote between States of the most unequal
dimensions and populousness; nor is the inference accurate in point
of fact; for we can enumerate nine States which contain less than a
majority of the people;(4) and it is constitutionally possible that
these nine may give the vote. Besides, there are matters of considerable
moment determinable by a bare majority; and there are others, concerning