said that “he highly commended the part the Society of Friends had taken; it was the cause of humanity they had interested themselves in.”[225] The proposition of Mr. Gerry in reference to a national capital, after assuming various forms, subsided. But in 1785 three commissioners were appointed “to lay out a district of not less than two nor exceeding three miles square, on the banks of either side of the Delaware, not more than eight miles above or below the lower falls thereof, for a federal town.”[226] At the Congress which met at New York two years later, unsuccessful efforts were made to substitute the Potomac for the Delaware. The commissioners, though appointed, never entered upon their business. At last, by the adoption of the Constitution, the subject was presented in a new form, under the following clause: “The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such district, not exceeding ten miles square, as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government of the United States.” From the records of the Convention it does not appear that this clause occasioned debate. But it broke out in the earliest Congress. Virginia and Maryland, each, by acts of their respective Legislatures, tendered the ten miles square, while similar propositions were made by citizens of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. After long and animated discussion, Germantown, in Pennsylvania, was on the point of being adopted, when the subject was postponed till the next session. Havre de Grace and Wright’s Ferry, both on the Susquehanna, Baltimore, on the Patapsco, and Connogocheague, on the Potomac, divided opinions. In the course of the debate, Mr. Gerry, who had first proposed the Potomac, now opposed it. He pronounced it highly unreasonable to fix the seat of government where nine States out of the thirteen would be to the northward, and adverted to the sacrifice the Northern States were ready to make in going as far south as Baltimore. An agreement seemed impossible, when the South suddenly achieved one of those political triumphs by which its predominance in the National Government was established. Pending at this time was the great and trying proposition to assume the State debts, which, being at first defeated through Southern votes, was at last carried by a “compromise,” according to which the seat of government was placed on the Potomac, thus settling the much vexed question. Mr. Jefferson, in a familiar account, thus sketches the “compromise.”