The heat has finally broken. Over the weekend a northeastern breeze flowed through Philadelphia, cooling the small lodging rooms housing delegates at the Indian Queen, Mrs. House’s boarding house, and the other inns between 2nd and 4th Streets near the State House. Meetings with Manasseh Cutler and various small gatherings over the weekend have anticipated today’s session, which could end in dissolution of the Convention.
The question to be taken up is “the whole report from the Grand Committee.” It provides that the 1st branch of the government shall consist of sixty-five members and specifies the number assigned to each State. The legislature may alter the number based on the results of a census to be conducted every ten years. The first census must take place within six years of the first meeting of the legislature. All bills for raising or appropriating money, and for fixing the salaries of officers of the government, shall originate in the 1st branch and cannot be amended in the 2nd branch. All money drawn from the public treasury must originate in the 1st branch. Finally, in the 2nd branch, “each State shall have an equal vote.”
The Convention’s Journal simply recorded, “The question being taken on the whole of the report from the grand Committee as amended – it passed in the affirmative.” The vote was 5 – 4 – 1. James Madison’s notes provide the vote breakdown. Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, all large States, voted “no.” Massachusetts was divided: Elbridge Gerry and Caleb Strong voted “yes,” while Rufus King and Nathaniel Gorham voted “no.”
The nationalists and large State delegates were dumbfounded and perhaps dumbstruck. After a stunned silence, the next item on the agenda was presented - a vote on the eighth resolution of the Report which had been postponed. It simply vests in the new legislature the powers currently held by the Confederacy Congress. In passed nem. con. Next, the question was to add to that power “all cases to which the separate States are incompetent; or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation.” Pierce Butler, on the losing side of the first vote, demanded to know the meaning of incompetent. It is too vague, he insisted. Vagueness in this case is appropriate, Gorham responded. “We are now establishing general principles to be extended hereafter into details which will be precise and explicit.”
Edmund Randolph, finally overcoming his shock at the vote on the whole report, exclaimed, “The vote this morning had embarrassed the business extremely. All the powers given in the Report from the Committee of the Whole were founded on the supposition that a proportional representation was to prevail in both branches of the legislature.” He came here this morning, he continued, to propose some new proposition he hoped could satisfy a majority, but seeing the small States “persist in demanding an equal vote in all cases,” it would probably be in vain. “For these reasons, he wished “the Convention might adjourn, that the large States might consider the steps proper to be taken in the present solemn crisis, and that the small States might also deliberate on the means of conciliation.”
William Paterson, Randolph’s nemesis from the small States, blurted out he would enthusiastically second such a motion if it were meant to adjourn sine die, meaning a permanent adjournment. “No conciliation could be admissible,” he insisted, “on any other ground than that of equality in the 2nd branch.”
Randolph responded, “sorry that his meaning had been so readily and strangely misinterpreted.” He meant an adjournment only until tomorrow. Paterson seconded the motion, “as an opportunity seemed to be wished by the larger States to deliberate further on conciliatory efforts.” The motion failed 5 – 5.
Delaware’s Jacob Broom is not a frequent speaker in the Convention, described in Pierce’s “sketches” as “silent in public, but cheerful and conversable in private.” He is not prepared to quit. Adjourning sine die “would be fatal,” he said. “Something must be done by the Convention, though it should be by a bare majority.” John Rutledge is clearly dismayed. “The little States are fixed,” he lamented. “All that the large States then have to do is to decide whether they will yield or not.” With Broom, he agrees, “we ought to do something.”
Randolph then renewed his motion to adjourn until tomorrow. It passed 7 – 2 – 1. This time, Georgia was divided. Connecticut and Delaware voted “no.”
The decision has been made. The Convention voted in favor of the Grand Committee’s Report proposing that States be represented equally in the 2nd branch of the legislature. But representatives of both sides have threatened to leave, and the large States have until tomorrow to consider their options. But for now, the vote holds.
Roger Sherman first broached the idea of proportional representation in the 1st branch and equality of States in the 2nd branch on June 11. A seemingly innocuous proposal, it received more attention when he raised it again on June 20. James Madison and James Wilson argued forcefully against it. “Can we forget for whom we are forming a government?” Madison had demanded. “Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?” Madison had even opposed forming the Grand Committee to seek a compromise. When the Committee made its Report, Wilson charged the Committee had “exceeded its powers.”
Two of the nationalist’s strongest advocates and most learned of delegates had suffered setbacks but the conciliatory tone and wisdom of George Mason had prevailed, at least for now. “There must be some accommodation on this point,” he said.