some standard referred to, which would be more simple.  He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained.  He therefore thought it the best mode which we could adopt, with one exception only:  he observed that negroes are property, and as such, cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those states where there are few slaves; that the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c. whereas a Southern farmer lays out the same surplus in slaves.  There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern states on the farmer’s head, and on his slave’s head, than the Northern ones on their farmers’ heads and the heads of their cattle:  that the method proposed would, therefore, tax the Southern states according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only; that negroes, in fact, should not be considered as members of the state, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.

Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this article, as an index of the wealth of the state, and not as subjects of taxation; that, as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves; that in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only.  What matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm, give them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?  The ten laborers add as much wealth annually to the state, increase its exports as much, in the one case as the other.  Certainly five hundred freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, than five hundred slaves.  Therefore the state in which are the laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves.  Suppose, by an extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one half the laborers of a state could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves; would the state be made the poorer or the less able to pay taxes?  That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern states, is as abject as that of slaves.  It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus for taxation, and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth; that it is the use of the word ‘property’ here, and its application to some of the people of the state, which produces the fallacy.  How does the Southern farmer procure slaves?  Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor.  If he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay-taxes; if he buys from