rule might enable the Atlantic States to retain the predominating influence in the government as against the Western interests, it might also enable the Northern to retain the control as against the Southern States, after the former had lost and the latter had gained a majority of population. The proposed conjectural apportionment of members for the first Congress would give thirty-six members to the States that held few or no slaves, and twenty-nine to the States that held many. Mason and Randolph, who represented in a candid manner the objections which Virginia must entertain to such a scheme, did not deny, that, according to the present population of the States, the Northern part had a right to preponderate; but they said that this might not always be the case; and yet that the power might be retained unjustly, if the proportion on which future apportionments were to be made by the legislature were not ascertained by a definite rule, and peremptorily fixed by the Constitution. Gouverneur Morris, who strenuously maintained the necessity for guarding the interests of the Atlantic against those of the Western States, insisted that the combined principles of numbers and wealth gave a sufficient rule for the legislature; that it was a rule which they could execute; and that it would avoid the necessity of a distinct and special admission of the slaves into the census,--an idea which he was sure the people of Pennsylvania would reject. Mr. Madison argued, forcibly, that unfavorable distinctions against the new States that might be formed in the West would be both unjust and impolitic. He thought that their future contributions to the treasury had been much underrated; that the extent and fertility of the Western soil would create a vast agricultural interest; and that, whether the imposts on the foreign supplies which they would require were levied at the mouth of the Mississippi or in the Atlantic ports, their trade would certainly advance with their population, and would entitle them to a rule which should assume numbers to be a fair index of wealth.