If the principles of Populism grow strong enough to carry the large states they will probably be found strong enough to carry the small states. If they be found strong enough to control the state elections, they will control national offices, because, as the Washington Post very aptly points out, _the Federal Government holds no elections and has no voters_: it is the state that holds the election and furnishes the voters; it is the state that prescribes the limits of the franchise, and says how, when, where and by whom these elections shall be held; _and even the Federal Judiciary has not yet ventured to infringe in the slightest degree upon that reserved right of the separate states_. * * * * * Speaking of the equal representation of the states in the Senate, Mr. Adams says, “_This vicious compromise was made in the Constitutional Convention as the price for the perpetuation of slavery._” This compromise he characterizes further as “_cowardly and unfair_.” And he adds: “Now that the logic of events has made this a nation, despite the restrictive clauses of the Constitution, the dual participation of the unrepresentative Senate is so grotesque that its continuance is fraught with a danger which at any time is likely to precipitate civil war.” Is Mr. Adams quite sure that “this vicious compromise was the price of the perpetuation of slavery”? Of course, I knew in a general way that slavery had been responsible for pretty nearly every mean old thing that has ever happened to this country; and it has always grieved me, with more or less poignancy, that New England could not have _foreseen_ that she couldn’t make slavery pay. We lost much precious time while she was discovering that she couldn’t. When at length she _did_ discover that there was no money in it for _her_, she thoughtfully sold most of her slaves, and went in for Emancipation. _Then_, to be sure, the sacred “Cause of Freedom” advanced at a gallop; but, as I said, we had lost a good deal of time waiting for New England to make her experiment, and a good deal of unhappiness resulted. But while I knew all this, in a general way, I really was not aware that the slave-owning states in the Constitutional Convention forced Washington, Madison, Franklin and Randolph to act in the cowardly and vicious manner described by Mr. Adams. The state of Virginia bitterly opposed the equal representation of the states in the Senate. This was strange conduct in Virginia, if the purpose of that compromise was the “perpetuation of slavery.” The state of New Jersey was the leader of those states in the convention which demanded equal representation in the Senate. If that senatorial equality was intended to perpetuate slavery, New Jersey’s attitude was most peculiar.