a greater surplus for taxation.  The slave is neither fed nor clothed so expensively as a freeman.  Again, white women are exempted from labor generally, which negro women are not.  In this then the Southern States have an advantage as the article now stands.  It has sometimes been said that slavery was necessary, because the commodities they raise would be too dear for market if cultivated by freemen; but now it is said that the labor of the slave is the dearest.

Mr. Payne (of Massachusetts) urged the original resolution of Congress, to proportion the quotas of the States to the number of souls.

Mr. Witherspoon (of New-Jersey) was of opinion, that the value of lands and houses was the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and that it was practicable to obtain such a valuation.  This is the true barometer of wealth.  The one now proposed is imperfect in itself, and unequal between the States.  It has been objected that negroes eat the food of freemen, and therefore should be taxed.  Horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they also should be taxed.  It has been said too, that in carrying slaves into the estimate of the taxes the State is to pay, we do no more than those States themselves do, who always take slaves into the estimate of the taxes the individual is to pay.  But the cases are not parallel.  In the Southern Colonies, slaves pervade the whole colony; but they do not pervade the whole continent.  That as to the original resolution of Congress, it was temporary only, and related to the moneys heretofore emitted:  whereas we are now entering into a new compact, and therefore stand on original ground.

AUGUST 1st.  The question being put, the amendment proposed was rejected by the votes of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey and Pennsylvania, against those of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North, and South Carolina.  Georgia was divided. Vol.  I. pp. 27-8-9, 30-1-2.

Extracts from Madison’s Report of Debates in the Congress of the Confederation.

TUESDAY, Feb. 11, 1783.

Mr. Wolcott declares his opinion that the Confederation ought to be amended by substituting numbers of inhabitants as the rule; admits the difference between freemen and blacks; and suggests a compromise, by including in the numeration such blacks only as were within sixteen and sixty years of age. p. 331.

TUESDAY, March 27, 1783.

The eleventh and twelfth paragraphs: 

Mr. Wilson (of Pennsylvania) was strenuous in their favor; said he was in Congress when the Articles of Confederation directing a valuation of land were agreed to; that it was the effect of the impossibility of compromising the different ideas of the Eastern and Southern States, as to the value of slaves compared with the whites, the alternative in question.

Mr. Clark (of New Jersey) was in favor of them.  He said that he was also in Congress when this article was decided; that the Southern States would have agreed to numbers in preference to the value of land, if half their slaves only should be included; but that the Eastern States would not concur in that proposition.