Such had been the previous experience of the Union on the subject of taxation; and now, in 1787, when an effort was to be made to establish a government upon a popular representation of the States which had found it so difficult to agree upon a just and practicable rule for determining their proportions of the public burdens, the whole subject became still further complicated with the difficulties attending the adjustment of this new right of proportional representation. The maxim which would regulate it by the same ratio that is applied to the distribution of taxes, contained within itself a just principle; but it went no farther than to assert a principle of justice, and it left the subject of the rule itself surrounded by the same difficulties as before. The Southern States complained that their slaves, if counted as property for the purposes of taxation, were to be so counted upon a ratio left wholly to the discretion of Congress; and if counted as numbers, for the same purpose, that they ought not to be reckoned in their entire number. They professed their readiness to have representation and taxation regulated by the same rule, but they insisted on the security of a definite rule, to be established in the Constitution itself; and this security, they said, must embrace an admission of the slaves into the basis of representation, if they were to be included in the basis of direct taxation.[106] Accordingly, before the rule as to taxation had been determined, Randolph submitted a distinct proposition, which contemplated a census of the white inhabitants and of three fifths of all other persons, with a peremptory direction to Congress to arrange the representation accordingly. The Northern States, on the other hand, resisted the direct introduction of the slaves into the representation, as persons; and it was plain that, if they were to be treated as property, and the representation was to be regulated by a rule of wealth, their value as property must be compared with that of other species of personalty held in the same and in other States, and some principles for computing it must be ascertained. Upon such economical questions as these, the agreement of different minds, under the influence of different interests, was absolutely impossible.