land flourish like this, which is cultivated by the hands of
freemen? Are not _three_ of these independent freemen of more real
advantage to a State, than _five_ of those poor slaves?

Mr. NASSON remarked on the statement of the honorable Mr. KING, by
saying that the honorable gentleman should have gone further, and
shown us the other side of the question. It is a good rule that works
both ways--and the gentleman should also have told us, that three of
our infants in the cradle, are to be rated as high as five of the
working negroes of Virginia. Mr. N. adverted to a statement of Mr.
KING, who had said, that five negro children of South Carolina were
equally rateable as three governors of New England, and wished, he
said, the honorable gentleman had considered this question upon the
other side--as it would then appear that this State will pay as great
a tax for three children in the cradle, as any of the southern States
will for five hearty working negro men. He hoped, he said, while we
were making a new government, we should make it better than the old
one: for if we had made a bad bargain before, as had been hinted, it
was a reason why we should make a better one now.

Mr. DAWES said, he was sorry to hear so many objections raised against
the paragraph under consideration. He though them wholly unfounded;
that the black inhabitants of the southern States must be considered
either as slaves, and as so much property, or in the character of so
many freemen; if the former, why should they not be wholly
represented? Our _own_ State laws and Constitution would lead us to
consider those blacks as _freemen_, and so indeed would our own ideas
of natural justice: if, then, they are freemen, they might form an
equal basis for representation as though they were all white
inhabitants. In either view, therefore, he could not see that the
northern States would suffer, but directly to the contrary. He
thought, however, that gentlemen would do well to connect the passage
in dispute with another article in the Constitution, that permits
Congress, in the year 1808, wholly to prohibit the importation of
slaves, and in the mean time to impose a duty of ten dollars a head on
such blacks as should be imported before that period. Besides, by the
new Constitution, every particular State is left to its own option
totally to prohibit the introduction of slaves into its own
territories. What could the convention do more? The members of the
sout