But there was also another question involved in the form in which the proposed restriction had been presented. It prohibited the national government from taxing exports, but imposed no restraint in this respect upon the power of the States. If they were to retain the power over their own exports, they would have the same right to tax the products of other States exported through their maritime towns. This power had been used to a great extent, and always oppressively. Virginia had taxed the tobacco of North Carolina; Pennsylvania had taxed the products of Maryland, of New Jersey, and of Delaware; and it was apparent, that every State, not possessed of convenient and accessible seaports, must hereafter submit to the same exactions, if this power were left unrestrained. Give it to the general government, said the advocates for a full revenue power, and the inconveniences attending its exercise by the separate States will be avoided. But those who were opposed to the possession of such a power by the general government, apprehended greater oppression by a majority of the States acting through the national legislature, than they could suffer at the hands of individual States. The eight Northern States, they said, had an interest different from the five Southern States, and in one branch of the legislature the former were to have thirty-six votes, and the latter twenty-nine. From considerations like these, united with others which would render it nearly impracticable to select the objects of such taxation so as to make it operate equally, the restriction prevailed.[221] The revenue power was thus shorn of one great branch of taxation, which, however difficult it might be to practise it throughout such a country as this, is part of the prerogatives of every complete government, which was believed by many to be essential to the success of the proposed Constitution, but which was resisted successfully by others, as oppressive to their local and peculiar interests.