native citizens. The individual states alone have done this. The former therefore are at liberty to make any discriminations they may judge requisite.

Mr. GORHAM. When foreigners are naturalized, it would seem as if they stand on an equal footing with natives. He doubted, then, the propriety of giving a retrospective force to the restriction.

Mr. MADISON animadverted on the peculiarity of the doctrine of Mr. Sherman. It was a subtlety by which every national engagement might be evaded. By parity of reason, whenever our public debts or foreign treaties become inconvenient, nothing more would be necessary to relieve us from them than to re-model the Constitution. It was said that the United States, as such, have not pledged their faith to the naturalized foreigners, and therefore are not bound. Be it so, and that the states alone are bound. Who are to form the new Constitution by which the condition of that class of citizens is to be made worse than the other class? Are not the states the agents? Will they not be the members of it? Did they not appoint this Convention? Are not they to ratify its proceedings? Will not the new Constitution be their act? If the new Constitution, then, violates the faith pledged to any description of people, will not the makers of it, will not the states, be the violators? To justify the doctrine, it must be said that the states can get rid of the obligation by revising the Constitution, though they could not do it by repealing the law under which foreigners held their privileges. He considered this a matter of real importance. It would expose us to the reproaches of all those who should be affected by it, reproaches which would soon be echoed from the other side of the Atlantic, and would unnecessarily enlist among the adversaries of the reform a very considerable body of citizens. We should moreover reduce every state to the dilemma of rejecting it, or of violating the faith pledged to a part of its citizens.

Mr. GOVERNEUR MORRIS considered the case of persons under twenty-five years of age as very different from that of foreigners. No faith could be pleaded by the former in bar of the regulation. No assurance had ever been given that persons under that age should be in all cases on a level with those above it. But, with regard to foreigners among us, the faith had been pledged that they should enjoy the privileges of citizens. If the restriction as to age had been confined to natives, and had left foreigners under twentyfive years of age eligible in this case, the discrimination would have been an equal injustice on the other side.

Mr. PINCKNEY remarked, that the laws of the states had varied much the terms of naturalization in different parts of America; and contended that the United States could not be bound to respect them on such an occasion as the present. It was a sort of recurrence to first principles.

Col. MASON was struck, not, like Mr. Madison, with the peculiarity, but the propriety, of the doctrine of Mr. Sherman. The states have formed different qualifications themselves for enjoying different

rights of citizenship. Greater caution would be necessary in the outset of the government than afterwards. All the great objects would then be provided for. Every thing would be then set in motion. If persons among us attached to Great Britain should work themselves into our councils, a turn might be given to our affairs, and particularly to our commercial regulations, which might have pernicious consequences. The great houses of British merchants would spare no pains to insinuate the instruments of their views into the government.

Mr. WILSON read the clause in the constitution of Pennsylvania giving to foreigners, after two years' residence, all the rights whatsoever of citizens; combined it with the Article of Confederation making the citizens of one state citizens of all; inferred the obligation Pennsylvania was under to maintain the faith thus pledged to her citizens of foreign birth, and the just complaint which her failure would authorize. He observed, likewise, that the princes and states of Europe would avail themselves of such breach of faith, to deter their subjects from emigrating to the United States.

Mr. MERCER enforced the same idea of a breach of faith.

Mr. BALDWIN could not enter into the force of the arguments against extending the disqualification to foreigners now citizens. The discrimination of the place of birth was not more objectionable than that of age, which all had concurred in the propriety of.

On the question on the proviso of Mr. Gouverneur Morris in favor of foreigners now citizens,

Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, ay, 5; New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, no, 6.

Mr. CARROLL moved to insert "five" years, instead of "seven," in article 4, sect. 2,

Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, ay, 3; New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, no, 7; Pennsylvania, divided.

The section (article 4, sect. 2,) as formerly amended, was then agreed to, nem. con.

Mr. WILSON moved that, in article 5, sect. 3, "nine years" be reduced to "seven"; which was disagreed to, and article 5, sect. 3, confirmed by the following vote,

New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, ay, 8; Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, no, 3,205

Article 4, sect. 5, being reconsidered,

Mr. RANDOLPH moved that the clause be altered so as to read: "Bills for raising money for the purpose of revenue, or for appropriating the same, shall originate in the House of Representatives; and shall not be so amended or altered by the Senate as to increase or diminish the sum to be raised, or change the mode of levying it, or the object of its appropriation." He would not repeat his reasons,

but barely remind the members from the smaller states of the compromise by which the larger states were entitled to this privilege. Col. MÁSON. This amendment removes all the objections urged against the section as it stood at first. By specifying purposes of revenue, it obviated the objection that the section extended to all bills under which money might incidentally arise. By authorizing amendments in the senate, it got rid of the objections that the senate could not correct errors of any sort, and that it would introduce into the House of Representatives the practice of tacking foreign matter to money bills. These objections being removed, the arguments in favor of the proposed restraint on the Senate ought to have their full force. First, the Senate did not represent the people, but the states, in their political character. It was improper, therefore, that it should tax the people. The reason was the same against their doing it as it had been against Congress doing it. Secondly, nor was it in any respect necessary, in order to cure the evils of our republican system. He admitted, that notwithstanding the superiority of the republican form over every other, it had its evils. The chief ones were, the danger of the majority oppressing the minority, and the mischievous influence of demagogues. The general government of itself will cure them. As the states will not concur at the same time in their unjust and oppressive plans, the general government will be able to check and defeat them, whether they result from the wickedness of the majority, or from the misguidance of demagogues. Again, the Senate is not, like the House of Representatives, chosen frequently, and obliged to return frequently among the people. They are to be chosen by the states for six years - - will probably settle themselves at the seat of government will pursue schemes for their own aggrandisement will be able, by wearying out the House of Representatives, and taking advantage of their impatience at the close of a long session, to extort measures for that purpose. If they should be paid, as he expected would be yet determined and wished to be so, out of the national treasury, they will, particularly, extort an increase of their wages. A bare negative was a very different thing from that of originating bills. The practice in England was in point. The House of Lords does not represent nor tax the people, because not elected by the people. If the Senate can originate, they will, in the recess of the legislative sessions, hatch their mischievous projects for their own purposes, and have their money bills cut and dried (to use a common phrase) for the meeting of the House of Representatives. He compared the case to Poyning's law, and signified that the House of Representatives might be rendered, by degrees, like the Parliament of Paris, the mere depository of the decrees of the Senate. As to the compromise, so much had passed on that subject that he would say nothing about it. He did not mean, by what he had said, to oppose the permanency of the Senate. On the contrary, he had no repugnance to an increase of it, nor to allowing it a negative, though the Senate was not, by its present constitution, entitled to it.

But, in all events, he would contend that the purse-strings should be in the hands of the representatives of the people.

Mr. WILSON was himself directly opposed to the equality of votes granted to the Senate by its present constitution. At the same time, he wished not to multiply the vices of the system. He did not mean to enlarge on a subject which had been so much canvassed, but would remark, as an insuperable objection against the proposed restriction of money bills to the House of Representatives, that it would be a source of perpetual contentions, where there was no mediator to decide them. The President here could not, like the executive magistrate in England, interpose by a prorogation or dissolution. This restriction had been found pregnant with altercation in every state where the constitution had established it. The House of Representatives will insert other things in money bills, and, by making them conditions of each other, destroy the deliberate liberty of the Senate. He stated the case of a preamble to a money bill sent up by the House of Commons, in the reign of Queen Anne, to the House of Lords, in which the conduct of the misplaced ministry, who were to be impeached before the lords, was condemned, the commons thus extorting a premature judgment without any hearing of the parties to be tried, and the House of Lords being thus reduced to the poor and disgraceful expedient of opposing, to the authority of a law, a protest on their journals against its being drawn into precedent. If there was any thing like Poyning's law in the present case, it was in the attempt to vest the exclusive right of originating in the House of Representatives, and so far he was against it. He should be equally so if the right were to be exclusively vested in the Senate. With regard to the purse-strings, it was to be observed that the purse was to have two strings, one of which was in the hands of the House of Representatives, the other in those of the Senate. Both Houses must concur in untying, and of what importance could it be which untied first, which last? He could not conceive it to be any objection to the Senate's preparing the bills, that they would have leisure for that purpose, and would be in the habits of business. War, commerce, and revenue, were the great objects of the general government. All of them are connected with money. The restriction in favor of the House of Representatives would exclude the Senate from originating any important bills whatever.

Mr. GERRY considered this as a part of the plan that would be much scrutinized. Taxation and representation are strongly associated in the minds of the people; and they will not agree that any but their immediate representatives shall meddle with their purses. In short, the acceptance of the plan will inevitably fail, if the Senate be not restrained from originating money bills.

Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. All the arguments suppose the right to originate and to tax to be exclusively vested in the Senate. The effects commented on may be produced by a negative only in the Senate. They can tire out the other House, and extort their con

currence in favorite measures, as well by withholding their negative as by adhering to a bill introduced by themselves.

Mr. MADISON thought, if the substitute offered by Mr. Randolph for the original section is to be adopted, it would be proper to allow the Senate at least so to amend as to diminish the sums to be raised. Why should they be restrained from checking the extravagance of the other House? One of the greatest evils incident to republican government was the spirit of contention and faction. The proposed substitute, which in some respects lessened the objections against the section, had a contrary effect with respect to this particular. It laid a foundation for new difficulties and disputes between the two Houses. The word revenue was ambiguous. In many acts, particularly in the regulation of trade, the object would be twofold. The raising of revenue would be one of them. How could it be determined which was the primary or predominant one; or whether it was necessary that revenue should be the sole object, in exclusion even of other incidental effects? When the contest was first opened with Great Britain, their power to regulate trade was admitted, their power to raise revenue rejected. An accurate investigation of the subject afterwards proved that no line could be drawn between the two cases. The words amend or alter form an equal source of doubt and altercation. When an obnoxious paragraph shall be sent down from the Senate to the House of Representatives, it will be called an origination under the name of an amendment. The Senate may actually couch extraneous matter under that name. In these cases, the question will turn on the degree of connection between the matter and object of the bill, and the alteration or amendment offered to it. Can there be a more fruitful source of dispute, or a kind of dispute more difficult to be settled? His apprehensions on this point were not conjectural. Disputes had actually flowed from this source in Virginia, where the Senate can originate no bill. The words, "so as to increase or diminish the sum to be raised," were liable to the same objections. In levying indirect taxes, which it seemed to be understood were to form the principal revenue of the new government, the sum to be raised would be increased or diminished by a variety of collateral circumstances influencing the consumption in general,the consumption of foreign or of domestic articles, of this or that particular species of articles, and even by the mode of collection, which may be closely connected with the productiveness of a tax. The friends of the section had argued its necessity from the permanency of the Senate. He could not see how this argument applied. The Senate was not more permanent now than in the form it bore in the original propositions of Mr. Randolph, and at the time when no objection whatever was hinted against its originating money bills. Or if, in consequence of a loss of the present question, a proportional vote in the Senate should be reinstated, as has been urged as the indemnification, the permanency of the Senate will remain the same. If the right to originate be vested exclusively in the House of Repre