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CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
there is no reason to say, that it can, or ought to be otherwise in regard to representatives; for that would be to contravene the very injunctions of the constitution, which require the like rule of apportionment in each case. In the one, the apportionment may be run down below unity; in the other, it cannot. But this does not change the nature of the rule, but only the extent of its application.
§ 678. In 1790, a bill was introduced into the house of representatives, giving one representative for every thirty thousand, and leaving the fractions unrepresented; thus producing an inequality, which was greatly complained of. It passed the house; and was amended in the senate by allowing an additional representative to the states having the largest fractions. The house finally concurred in the amendment, after a warm debate. The history of these proceedings is summarily stated by the biographer of Washington, as follows:—"Construing," says he,the constitution to authorize a process, by which the whole number of representatives should be ascertained on the whole population of the United States, and afterwards apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, the senate applied the number thirty thousand, as a divisor, to the total population, and taking the quotient, which was one hundred and twenty, as the number of representatives given by the ratio, which had been adopted in the house, where the bill originated, they apportioned that number among the several states by that ratio, until as many representatives, as it
200,000, there is no logic, which, consistently with common sense, or justice, could, upon any constitutional apportionment, assign three representatives to one, and seven to the other, any more than it could of a direct tax the proportion of three to one, and seven to the other.
