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THE THREE FIFTHS VOTE.

is to be found in two circumstances-in the nature of the Federal Constitution, regarded in connexion with the singleness of aim and steadiness of purpose, which naturally characterize men whose interests and ideas are confined within the narrow range permitted by slave institutions.

The Federal Constitution, as is well known, was a compromise between two principles-the democratic principle of representation in proportion to numbers, and the federal principle of representation according to states. In the Lower House of Congress-the House of Representatives-the former principle prevailed; the several states of the Union sending members to this assembly in proportion to the relative numbers of their population. In the Senate-the Upper House, on the other hand, representation took place according to states-each state, without regard to extent or population, being there represented by the same number of senators. In the election of the Prestdent these two principles were combined, and the voting power of the several states was determined by adding to the number of their representatives in the Lower House the number of their representatives in the Senate-that is to say, by the proportion of members which each state respectively sent to both Houses. Such was the general character of the scheme.*

In the arrangement, as thus stated, there would seem to be nothing which was not calculated to give to numbers, wealth, and intelligence, their due share in the government of the country. But in applying to the South the principles just described, a provision was introduced which had the effect of very materially altering, as regards that portion of the Union, the popular character of the Constitution. This was the clause enacting what is known as the three-fifths vote. The House of Representatives professed to be based on the principle of representation in proportion to population; but, by virtue of this clause, in reckoning population slaves were allowed to count in the proportion of five slaves to three free persons. Now, when we remember that the slaves of the South number four millions in a population of which the total is under ten millions, it is not difficult to perceive what must be the effect of such an arrangement upon the balance of

* The means by which it has been sought to preserve the balance between these two principles of the Constitution are thus brieny and comprehensively stated in the Federalist :-"The Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers it is national, not federal; in the extent of them again it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."-Story on the Constitution of the United States, vol. i., p. 199.

SUPERIOR CAPACITY FOR COMBINED ACTION. 101

forces under the Constitution. In the Presidential election of 1856, the slave representation was nearly equal to one-third of the whole Southern representation; from which it appears that the influence of the South in the general representation of the Union was, in virtue of the three-fifths vote, nearly one-half greater than it would have been had the popular principle of the Constitution been fairly carried out. But the influence of the South, as we formerly saw, merely means the influence of a few hundred thousand slaveholders; the whole political power of the Slave States being in practice monopolized by this body. The case, therefore, stands thus: under the local institutions of the Slave States, the slaveholding interest-a mere fraction in the whole population-predominates in the South; while, under this provision of the Federal Constitution, the South acquires an influence in the Union by one-half greater than legitimately belongs to it. It is true this would not enable the Southern States, while their aggregate population was inferior to that of the Northern, to command a majority in the Lower House by means of their own members. But we must remember that the South is a homogeneous body, having but one interest to promote and one policy to pursue; while the interests and aims of the North are various, and its councils consequently divided. "The selfish, single-purposed party," says Mr. Senior,* which general politics are indifferent, which is ready to ally itself to Free-traders or to Protectionists, to Reformers or to Anti-reformers, to Puseyites or to Dissenters, becomes powerful by becoming unscrupulous. If Ireland had been an independent country, separated from England, the Ultra-Catholic party, whose only object is the domination of the clergy and of the Pope, would have ruled her. This is the source of the influence of a similar party in France. The Clerical, or Jesuit, or Popish, or Ultramontane faction-whatever name we give to it has almost always obtained its selfish objects, because those objects are all that it cares for. It supported the Restoration, its Priests blessed the insurgents of February, 1848, and it now worships Louis Napoleon. The only condition which it makes is ecclesiastical and Popish supremacy, and that condition the governor for the time being of France usually accepts.

* " to

"Such a party is the Southern party in the United States." Its single aim has been the consolidation and extension of slavery; and to the accomplishment of this end it has always been ready to sacrifice all other interests in the country, and, if necessary, the integrity of the Union itself. We may see, then, in what consists the vaunted aptitude for politics exhibited by

*Slavery in the United States, pp. 16, 17.

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DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE: ITS BASIS.

Southern men it lies simply in the intense selfishness and utter absence of scruple with which they have persistently pushed their object. They have acted steadily together-a course for which no political virtue was necessary where there was but a single interest to promote, and that interest their own. They have contrived, by an unscrupulous use of an immense patronage, to detach from the array of their opponents a section sufficiently large to turn the scale of divisions in their favour:-in other words, they have been successful practitioners in the art of political jobbery. Lastly, they have worked on the apprehensions and the patriotism of the country at large by the constantly repeated threat which they have now proved themselves capable of putting in force-of dissolving the Union.*

The actual inferiority in population of the Southern to the Northern States, even under the peculiar advantage conferred by the three-fifths clause, rendered it necessary that the slaveholders should procure an ally among the northern people; and this indispensable ally they found in the Democratic party. It has been frequently remarked upon with surprise that, in seeking a political connexion, the South-whose social and political system is intensely aristocratic-should have attached itself to that party in the Union in which the democratic principle has been carried to the greatest extreme. But the explanation is to be found in the circumstances of the case. The peculiarity of the industrial and social economy of the Southern States led them from the first to lean to the doctrine of state rights, as opposed to the pretensions of the central government; and he doctrine of state rights is a democratic doctrine. On this fundamental point, therefore, the principles of the Southern oligarchy and those of the Northern democracy were the same. But the alliance was not destitute of the cement of interest and feeling. The Democratic party had its principal seats in the great towns along the Northern seaboard; and between the capitalists of these towns and the planters of the South the commercial connexion had always been close. Capital is much

* “Figurez-vous sur un vaisseau un homme debout près de la sainte-barbe, avec un mèche allumée; il est seul, mais on lui obéit, car, à la première désobéissance, il se fera sauter avec tout l'équipage. Voilà précisément ce qui se passait en Amérique depuis qu'elle allait à la dérive. La manoeuvre était commandée par l'homme qui tenait la mèche. 'A la première désobéissance, nous nous quittons.' Tel a été de tout temps le langage des Etats du Sud. On les savait capables de tenir parole aussi n'y avait-il plus qu'un argument en Amérique, la scission ' Révoquez le compromis, sinon la scission; modifiez la législation des Etats libres, sinon la scission; courez avec nous les aventures, et entreprenez des conquêtes pour l'esclavage, sinon la scission; enfin, et par dessus tout, ne vous permettez jamais d'élire un président qui ne soit pas nôtre candidat, sinon la scission. '"-Un Grand Peuple qui se relève, p. 37.

THE TERMS OF THE BARGAIN.

103

needed under a slave system, and is at the same time scarce. In the Northern cities it was abundant. To the capitalists of the Northern cities, therefore, the planters in need of funds for carrying on their industry had recourse; and a large amount of democratic capital came thus to be invested on the security of slave property. A community of interest was in this way established. But there was also a community of sentiment; for the Northern cities had formerly been the great emporia of the African slave trade, and had never wholly abandoned the nefarious traffic; and the tone of mind engendered by constant familiarity with slavery in its worst form naturally predisposed them to an alliance with slaveholders. Widely sundered, therefore, as were the Southern oligarchy and the Democratic party of the North in general political principle, there was enough in common between them to form the basis of a selfish bargain. A bargain, accordingly, was struck, of which the consideration on the one side was the command of the Federal government for the extension of slavery, and, on the other, a share in the patronage of the Union. On these terms a coalition between these two parties, so opposed in their general tendencies, has, almost from the foundation of the republic, been steadily maintained; and in this way the South-vastly inferior though it has been to its competitor in wealth, population, and intelligence-in all the conditions to which political power attaches in well-ordered states-has, nevertheless, contrived to exercise a leading influence upon the policy of the Union.

These con-iderations will suffice to explain how the South has been enabled, even when in a minority, to engage with success the representatives of the North. In the Lower House of Congress it has been always of necessity in this position; representation being here in proportion to population, in which, even including slaves, the South is inferior to its rival. But in the Upper House-the House which under the Constitution enjoys the most important prerogatives and the highest influence -the South has found itself at less disadvantage. In the Senate, as has been already stated, representation takes place according to states; each state returning two members without regard either to the number of its inhabitants or to the extent of its territory. To maintain itself, therefore, on an equal footing with the North in this assembly, the South has only need to keep the number of slave states on an equality with that of the free; and this did not seem to be beyond its power. For, the tendency of slavery being to disperse population, a given number of people under a slave régime would naturally cover a larger space of country, and consequently would afford the materials for the

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THE POLITICAL MOTIVE MAINLY OPERATIVE. creation of a greater number of states, than the same number under a régime of freedom. What, therefore, the South required to secure its predominance in the Senate, was a territory large enough for the creation of new slave states as fast as the exigencies of its politics might demand them. To keep open the territory of the Union for this purpose has, in consequence, always been a capital object in the politics of the South; and in this way a political has been added to the economic motive for extended territory. Two forces have thus been constantly urging on the Slave Power to territorial aggrandizement-the need for fresh soils, and the need for slave states. Of these the former-that which proceeds from its industrial requirementsis at once the most fundamental and the most imperative; but it has not been that which, in the actual history of the United States, has been most frequently called into play. In point of fact, the political motive has in a great measure superseded the economic. The desire to obtain fresh territory for the creation of slave states, with a view to influence in the Senate, has carried the South in its career of aggression far beyond the range which its mere industrial necessities would have prescribed. Accordingly, for nearly a quarter of a century—ever since the annexation of Texas-the territory at the disposal of the South has been very much greater than its available slave force has been able to cultivate; and its most urgent need has now become, not more virgin soils on which to employ its slaves, but more slaves for the cultivation of its virgin soils. The important bearing of this change on the views of the Slave Power will hereafter be pointed out: for the present, it is sufficient to call attention to the fact.

A principle of aggressive activity, in addition to that which is involved in the industrial necessities of slavery, has thus been called into operation by the conditions under which the Slave Power is placed in the Senate. But we should here be careful not to overrate the influence exercised on that Power by its position in the Federal Union. It would, I conceive, be an entire mistake to suppose that this desire for extended territory, which, under actual circumstances, has shown itself in the creation of slave states with a view to influence in the Senate, is in any such sense the fruit of the position of the South in the Federal Union as that we should be justified in concluding that, in the event of the severance of the Union, the South would cease to desire an extension of its territory on political grounds. Such a view would, in my opinion, imply an entire misconception of the real nature of the forces which have been at work. The lust of dominion, which is the ruling passion of