umulate people in the Eastern States in proportion of five to three,
compared with the Southern. The disproportion will, doubtless, continue
to be much greater than I have calculated. It is actually greater at
present, for the climate and negro slavery are acknowledged to be
unfavorable to population, so that husbandry as well as commerce and
manufactures will give more people in the Eastern than in the Southern
States." It was, however, finally resolved by the House "that the
permanent seat of the government of the United States ought to be at
some convenient place on the banks of the river Susquehanna in the State
of Pennsylvania;" and a bill accordingly was sent to the Senate.

Had the Senate agreed to this bill, there are some luminous pages of
American history that would never have been written; for the progress of
events would have taken quite another direction had the influences
surrounding the national capital for the first half of this century been
Northern instead of Southern. But the Senate did not agree. For "the
convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna" it substituted ten
miles square on the river Delaware, beginning one mile from Philadelphia
and including the village of Germantown. To this amendment the House
agreed, and there, but for Madison, the matter would have ended. He had
labored earnestly for the site on the Potomac; but failing in that, he
hoped to postpone the question till the next session of Congress, when
the representatives from North Carolina would be present. He moved a
proviso that the laws of Pennsylvania should remain in force within the
district ceded by the State till Congress should otherwise provide by
law. It seems to have been accepted without consideration, a single
member only saying that he saw no necessity for it. At any rate, whether
that was Mr. Madison's motive or not, time was gained, for it compelled
the return of the bill to the Senate. This was on September 28, and the
next day the session was closed by adjournment till the following
January.

When in that next session the bill came back from the Senate to the
House, a member from South Carolina said, in the course of debate, that
"a Quaker State was a bad neighborhood for the South Carolinians." The
Senate had also come to that conclusion, for the bill now proposed that
the capital should be at Philadelphia for ten years only, and should
then be removed to the banks of the Potomac. It was done, Madison wrote