Section 2. The Federal Congress.

[Sidenote:  The House of Representatives.] The federal House of Representatives is descended, through the state houses of representatives, from the colonial assemblies.  It is an assembly representing the whole population of the country as if it were all in one great state.  It is composed of members chosen every other year by the people of the states.  Persons in any state who are qualified to vote for state representatives are qualified to vote for federal representatives.  This arrangement left the power of regulating the suffrage in the hands of the several states, where it still remains, save for the restriction imposed in 1870 for the protection of the southern freedmen.  A candidate for election to the House of Representatives must be twenty-five years old, must have been seven years a citizen of the United States, and must be an inhabitant of the state in which he is chosen.

[Sidenote:  The three fifths compromise.] As the Federal Congress is a taxing body, representatives and direct taxes are apportioned among the several states according to the same rule, that is, according to population.  At this point a difficulty arose in the Convention as to whether slaves should be counted as population.  If they were to be counted, the relative weight of the slave states in all matters of national legislation would be much increased.  The northern states thought, with reason, that it would be unduly increased.  The difficulty was adjusted by a compromise according to which five slaves were to be reckoned as three persons.  Since the abolition of slavery this provision has become obsolete, but until 1860 it was a very important factor in American history.[7]

In the federal House of Representatives the great states of course have much more weight than the small states.  In 1790 the four largest states had 32 representatives, while the other nine had only 33.  The largest state, Virginia, had 10 representatives to 1 from Delaware.  These disparities have increased.  In 1880, out of thirty-eight states the nine largest had a majority of the house, and the largest state, New York, had 34 representatives to 1 from Delaware.

[Footnote 7:  See my Critical Period, pp. 257-262.]

[Sidenote:  The Connecticut compromise] This feature of the House of Representatives caused the smaller states in the Convention to oppose the whole scheme of constructing a new government.  They were determined that great and small states should have equal weight in Congress.  Their steadfast opposition threatened to ruin everything, when fortunately a method of compromise was discovered.  It was intended that the national legislature, in imitation of the state legislatures, should have an upper house or senate; and at first the advocates of a strong national government proposed that the senate also should represent population, thus differing from the lower house only in the way in which we have seen that it generally