Mr. COOKE said, that he could not but express his unfeigned astonishment, that the able gentleman from Chesterfield (Mr. Leigh) should have ventured to say to that assembly, that the principle of representation recommended by the Legislative Com mittee, was "new to him, and new in the history of the world." Can the gentleman have forgotten, (said Mr. Cooke,) that the principle which he treats as a novelty, and an innovation, is asserted in the " Declaration of the Rights of the people of Virginia?" And does he not know, that when the Convention of 1776 promulgated, in that instrument, the principles of Government on which their infant Republic was founded, they did but announce, in solemn form, to the people of Virginia, principles which had received, a century before, the deliberate sanction of the most enlightened friends of liberty, throughout the world?

Sir, the fathers of the Revolution did but reiterate those great and sacred truths which had been illustrated by the genius of Locke, and Sydney, and Milton: truths for which Hampden, and a host of his compatriots, had poured out their blood in vain.

Driven from Europe, by Kings, and Priests, and Nobles, those simple truths were received, with favour, by the sturdy yeomanry who dwelt on the western shores of the Atlantic. The love of liberty, aye, Sir, and of equality too, grew with the growth, and strengthened with the strength, of the Colonies. It declared war, at last, not only against the power of the King, but against the privilege of the Noble, and laid the deep foundations of our Republic on the sovereignty of the people and the equality of

men.

The sacred instrument, for sacred I will dare to call it, notwithstanding the sneers which its very name excites in this assembly of Republicans, the sacred instrument in which those great principles were declared, was ushered into existence under circumstances the most impressive and solemn. The "Declaration of the Rights of the people of Virginia," was made by an assembly of sages and patriots, who had just involved their country in all the horrors of war, in all the dangers of an unequal contest with the most powerful nation on earth, for the sake of the noble and elevated principles which that instrument announces and declares. For the sake of those principles, they had imperilled their lives, their fortunes, their wives, their children, their country; and, in one word, all that is dear to man. For the sake of those principles, they had spread havoc and desolation over their native land, and consigned to ruin and poverty a whole generation of the people of Virginia.

And for what did they make these mighty sacrifices! For wild "abstractions, and metaphysical subtleties!" No, Sir. For principles of eternal truth; as practical, in character, as they are vital, in importance; for principles deep-seated in the nature of man, by whose development, alone, he can attain the happiness which is the great object of his being. Those principles are,

"That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people." "That all men are, by nature, equally free." And

"That a majority of the community" possesses, by the law of nature and necessity, a right to control its concerns.

These are the principles which the gentleman from Chesterfield regards as "wild and visionary;" as "abstractions and metaphysical subtleties;" and which are contemptuously styled by others, who think with him, " mere abstract principles." Passing by, without cominent, the curious fact, that these "abstract principles" received but yesterday the sanction of an unanimous vote of this body (so far, at least, as a nemine contradicente vote can be called unanimous): passing by the fact, I say, that the resolution of a special Committee declaring that the Bill of Rights requires no amendment, was but yesterday adopted, without a dissenting voice, I will pause, for a moment, to enquire what these gentlemen mean by their favourite phrase, "mere abstract principles?" If I rightly apprehend the import of the term "abstract," when applied, in a disparaging sense, to any general principle, it means that the principle, though true, as expressed, is, nevertheless, expressed in terms so general, that when an attempt is made to apply it to any given subject, it is almost always found that the subject is included, not within the principle itself, but within one or other of those exceptions, which detract from the universal correctness of all general principles. That the principle is an unmeaning generality, and scarcely susceptible of application to the every-day business of men. In short, that it is wild, visionary and unpractical.

Let us see, then, whether the principles which are announced by the Declaration of Rights, as the "basis and foundation of Government," are of this wild and vision"ary character. Let us see whether they do not, on the contrary, come home to the "business and bosoms of men."

It declares, then, in the first place," that all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.

Look to the situation and circumstances of those who made this declaration, to the occasion on which it was made, and to its bearing and operation on the existing insti

tutions of Virginia, and then say whether it was not a practical principle, and one too, of great pith and moment. The colonies had long been smarting under the ty rannical exercise of power, not derived from the people: Under the exercise of power assumed, by the King and Parliament of Great Britain, without the consent of the people. Here, then, is a bold denunciation of this usurped authority; an abolition of kingly power; a declaration that the people of Virginia are the only sovereigns of Virginia, and that they would tolerate, in all time to come, neither foreign Parliaments, nor Kings, nor Cæsars. A declaration that the only legitimate Government, is a Government of magistrates, deriving their power from the people, and responsible to the people. With whatever colour of plausibility this might have been called an abstract principle, in Europe, in the time of Locke and Sydney, who first maintained and supported it, thanks to the indomitable spirit of our ancestors, it became practical in Virginia, in 1776; was gallantly sustained through all the vicissitudes of the war, and received the sanction of royalty itself, at the peace which ensued. It was then that the slavish doctrine of the jus divinum of Kings, openly supported, but a century before, in the country from whence we sprung, received its practical refutation; and it might have been hoped, in Virginia at least, its final doom. From the period of the revolution till the meeting of this Convention, the doctrine "that all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people," was considered a great practical truth. Now, it is an "abstract principle," a wild and visionary speculation!

But again, Sir. The Bill of Rights declares, "that all men are, by nature, equally free." And this is considered an abstraction par excellence; the very abstraction of abstractions. It is even pronounced to be "absurd on the face of it," because it amounts, as it is said, to a declaration, that "all men, all women, and all children, are entitled to an equal share of political power."

I shall briefly examine this principle, Sir, in connexion with that which stands by its side in the Declaration of Rights, which is, in effect, that the sovereign power, the supreme control of its affairs, is vested in the majority of every free community. And I hesitate not to say, that taken in connexion, and they must be taken in connexion, they are so far from being speculative and abstract truths, much less absurd speculations, that they constitute in fact, a compendium of the whole law of rational and practical liberty, and were peculiarly appropriate and practical in their application to the actual condition of Virginia. Taking first the insulated proposition, that "all men are, by nature, equally free;" I pronounce it to be a great practical truth; a selfevident proposition; the primary postulate of the science of Government. Sir, what does this proposition mean, but that no one man is born with a natural right to control any other man; that no one man comes into the world with a mark on him, to designate him as possessing superior rights to any other man; that neither God nor nature recognize, in anticipation, the distinctions of bond and free, of despot and slave; but that these distinctions are artificial; are the work of man; are the result of fraud or violence. And who is so bold as to deny this simple truth?

But is it a mere "abstract" truth? Was it not, when declared by the authors of the Declaration of Rights, replete with practical meaning? What was their actual situation? The Government of England, against which this principle was directed, was incumbered with privileged orders; there was the King with his hereditary prerogative, and the noble with his hereditary privilege. The colonists had found, to their cost, in the earlier stages of their struggle, that prerogative and privilege, derived from birth, were the sworn and mortal foes of liberty. In announcing and reinstating the original equality of men, they declared war against both, and from that time, neither privilege nor prerogative derived from birth, have been tolerated in the Commonwealth which they established. And is there nothing practical in this? Is this a mere abstract principle; a mere "metaphysical subtlety?"

But it is said, that if it be true that "all men are by nature equally free," then all men, all women, and all children, are entitled to equal shares of political power; in other words, that they are all entitled to the right of suffrage, which is, practically, political power.

Sir, no such absurdity can be inferred from the language of the Declaration of Rights. The framers of that instrument did not undertake to write down in it all the rules and all the exceptions which constitute political law. They did not express the self-evident truth that the Creator of the Universe, to render woman more fit for the sphere in which He intended her to act, had made her weak and timid, in comparison with man, and had thus placed her under his control, as well as under his protection. That children, also, from the immaturity of their bodies and their minds, were under like control. They did not say, in terms, that the exercise of political power, that is to say, of the right of suffrage, necessarily implies free-agency and intelligence; free-agency, because it consists in election or choice between different men and different measures; and intelligence, because on a judicious choice depends the very safety and existence of the community. That nature herself had therefore pronounced, on women and children, a sentence of incapacity to exercise political power. They did

not say all this; and why? Because to the universal sense of all mankind, these were self-evident truths. They meant, therefore, this, and no more: that all the members of a community, of mature reason, and free agents by situation, are originally and by nature, equally entitled to the exercise of political power, or a voice in

the Government.

But at the same time that they recognized and expressed the general principle, the general right, they recognized and expressed a limitation of that general right imposed by nature and necessity. In affirming and declaring the jus majoris to be the law of all free communities, they did but declare the simple and obvious truth, that the essential character of a free Government, of a Government whose movements are regulated by numbers, involves the necessity of a submission by the minority to the majority. For the right of deliberation and election necessarily involves some decision between the men or the measures which are the subject of deliberation and election. All deliberation must come to a close, and every exercise of the right of election must terminate in a choice. To bring deliberation to some close, and election to some choice, it must of necessity be adopted as a rule, either that the majority or the minority must put an end to the deliberation, by pronouncing a decision: And the necessity of adopting the rule that the majority shall so pronounce, is founded on the necessity of a sanction to every law, on the fact that the majority possesses, in its superior physical force, that sanction, and on the certainty that it would not permanently submit to the opposite regulation. I say, permanently: Because, though the majority may be deluded for a time, by the artificial and vicious institutions of society, into a submission to the voice of the minority, they will arise, at last, and assert and enforce their natural superiority.

Neither did the framers of the Declaration of Rights carry out the jus majoris into certain other plain and obvious results: for they were not writing a treatise on political law, but merely announcing, in a brief and compendious form, its leading principles. They declared, for example, that the majority of every community has a right to adopt such a form of Government, and such a fundamental law, as to than seeins best. They left unexpressed the plain and obvious propositions, that in forming that fundamental law, the majority have a right to act, and ought to act, on the principles, that the safety of the people is the supreme law; that the legitimate object of all Government, is to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and that the perfect and entire protection of life, property, and personal liberty, constitutes the essential basis of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. That to effect these essential objects, the majority have a perfect right to prescribe, by a fundamental law, still further limitations to the universality of the right of suffrage. That they have a right to exclude, and ought to exclude, by their fundamental law, from the exercise of the right of suffrage, all those, who in the honest and deliberate opinion of the majority, cannot safely be entrusted with the exercise of it; or in other words, all those whose exercise of this right would be, in the honest and deliberate opinion of the majority, incompatible with the safety and well-being of the community, which is the supreme law. They did not set down, in express terms, all these distinct and consecutive propositions. But they did state the result to which they lead, when they said, in effect, that, in a well regulated community, those alone should be permitted to exercise the right of suffrage, who have "a permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community."

I say, then, Sir, with a confidence inspired by a deep conviction of the truth of what I advance, that the principles of the sovereignty of the people, the equality of men, and the right of the majority, set forth in the "Declaration of the Rights of the people of Virginia," so far from being "wild and visionary,” so far from being "abstractions and metaphysical subtleties," are the very principles which alone give a distinctire character to our institutions, are the principles which have had the practical effect in Virginia, of abolishing kingly pourer, and aristocratic privilege, substituting for them an elective magistracy, deriving their power from the people, and responsible to the people.

But it has been said that the authors of the Declaration of Rights themselves, admitted, in effect, the abstract and unpractical character of the principles which it contains, by establishing a Government whose practical regulations are wholly inconsis tent with those theoretical principles. That while, in the Declaration of Rights, they asserted that all power is vested in the people, and should be exercised by a majority of the people, they established a Government in which unequal countics, expressing their sense by the representatives of a selected for in those counties, to wit, the freeholders, were the real political units, or essential elements of political power. That the right of the majority, in this frame of Government, was violated in two dif ferent modes: First, by vesting the power, within each county, in the freeholders, who are a minority of the people; and next by investing small masses of people in the small counties, and large masses in the large counties, with equal power in the Government.

Sir, the argument would be a good one if the premises which support it were correct. But it is not true that the authors of the Declaration of Rights established the anomalous Government under which we have lived these fifty years and more. There can be no grosser error than to suppose that the Constitution of Virginia was formed in 1776. Its two great distinctive features, the sectional, and the aristocratic had been given to it a century before. The equal representation of the counties, which was the remote cause of its sectional character, was established, in 1661, by a General Assembly representing a population residing exclusively in the tide-water country, and consequently, at that time, homogeneous in character and identical in interest. The limitation of suffrage to freeholders which gave to it an aristocratic character, was imposed on the Colony in 1677, without any act of Assembly, by a letter of instructions from the King of England to his Governor in Virginia, backed and enforced by two regiments of British soldiers, who had been sent to the Colony for the express purpose of suppressing a popular insurrection. At the era of the revolution, then, these two provisions had been the constitutional law of the Colony for more than one hundred years. The freeholders had learned to pride themselves on their superior power and privileges, and the smaller counties on their equality with the larger. The body of the people were reconciled by habit to their actual condition.

What, then, was the situation in which the framers of the Constitution were placed?— While they framed that instrument they were almost within hearing of the thunder of hostile cannon. The invader was at the door. They were in continual danger of being driven from the very hall of legislation by the bayonets of the enemy. The whole undivided physical force of the country was barely sufficient to defend it against the superior force of a foreign enemy. It was utterly impossible, under such circunstances, to pull down, and erect anew, the whole fabric of Government. And it would have been to the last degree unwise and inpolitic, at such a fearful crisis, to distract the minds of the people by attempting a new distribution and arrangement of political power. It would have been the very height of folly, at such a crisis, to create disaffection in the minds of the freeholders, by stripping them of their exclusive powers, and to exasperate the smaller counties by degrading them from the rank which they had held under the royal Government. In leaving the freeholders and the counties as they found them, the framers of the Constitution bowed to the supreme law of necessity, and acted like wise and practical statesmen. then, is the argument which infers the unpractical character of the principles conWeak and unstable, tained in the Declaration of Rights from the inconsistency of the actual Government formed, with those principles. The very language resorted to in disposing of a subject of such vital importance as the regulation of the right of suffrage, the brief and summary way in which it is disposed of, would shew..in the absence of all other evidence, that it was a subject which the framers of the Constitution scarcely dured to touch." The right of suffrage shall remain as at present exercised.”

No, Sir, it was not reserved for us to discover the inconsistency between their theoretical principles, and their practieal regulations. They saw it themselves, and deplored it. In the very heat of the war which was waged for these "abstractions"-in the hurly-burly of the conflict, one statesman, at least, was found, to point out those inconsistencies, and to urge home on the people of Virginia the "new and unheard of principle, that in the apportionment of representation, regard should be had to the white population only. As early as 1781, Mr. Jefferson exhorted the people of Virginia, in the most earnest and impressive language, to reduce the principle to practice, "so soon as leisure should be afforded them, for intrenching, within good forms, the rights for which they had bled."

From that time to this, the spirit of reform has never slept. From that time to this, the friends of liberty have continually lifted up their voices against the inequality and injustice of our system of Government. Incessantly baffled and defeated, they have not abandoned their purpose; and after a struggle of fifty years, that purpose seems at length on the eve of accomplishment. The Representatives of the people of Virginia have at length assembled in Convention, to revise the Constitution of the State. A special committee of this Convention has recommended, among other measures of reform, the adoption of a resolution,

"That in the apportionment of representation, in the House of Delegates, regard should be had to white population exclusively."

It is this resolution which has called forth the denunciations of the gentleman from Chesterfield. It is this proposition, "new in the history of our Government, if not throughout the world; new certainly to him," which he calls on us to support.

Sir, I have ventured to assert, in the commencement of the remarks which I have had the honour to address to the Committee, that this proposition, so far from being "new and unheard of," is but a reiteration, a practical enforcement, of those principles of political law which were solemnly announced by the fathers of the revolution, in that noble paper, the "Declaration of the Rights of the people of Virginia, which

rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of Government." I proceed to redeem the pledge.

The Bill of Rights declares, that the people are the only legitimate source and foun. tain of political power.-The resolution of the Committee affirms this doctrine, by proposing, that in apportioning representation, or political power, regard shall be had to the people exclusively. Not to wealth, not to overgrown sectional interests, not to the supposed rights of the counties; but to the white population; to the people only. The Bill of Rights asserts the political equality of the citizens.-The resolution proposes to give to that principle a practical existence in our Government, by abolishing the inveterate abuse of the equal representation of unequal counties, and equalizing, as nearly as may be, the electoral districts throughout the Commonwealth, on the basis of free white population alone. ̧

The Bill of Rights pronounces the jus majoris to be the law of all free communities, by attributing to the majority of a community, the power to reform, alter or abolish, at its will and pleasure, the very Government itself, and consequently the lesser power of deciding, without appeal, in all matters of ordinary legislation.-The resolu tion proposes to give practical effect to the jus majoris, by making each Delegate the representative of an equal number of the people, so that the voice of a majority of the Delegates, will be the voice of a majority of the people. It proposes, in short, to establish that beautiful harmony between our theoretical principles and our practical regulations; the want of which, has been, for fifty years, the reproach of Virginia. The resolution of the Committee, then, proposes no new and unheard of scheme; no innovation on the established principles of our Government. It calls on you to listen to the warning voice of the fathers of the revolution, who, in this despised “declaration," have told you, "that no free Government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." But the accordance of the resolution with these great fundamental principles, has not obtained for it, the approbation of the gentleman from Culpeper, (Judge Green.) He proposes to amend it by striking out the word "exclusively," and adding the words "and taxation combined;" so that the resolution, as amended, would be,

That in the apportionment of representation in the House of Delegates, regard should be had to white population and taxation combined."

It will be perceived, at once, that the object of this amendment, is to substitute for the principle of representation contained in the resolution of the Committee, one of a totally new and different character. It proposes a mixed or compound basis of representation, the elements of which are property and people, in lieu of the simple basis of people only. For the total amount of taxation does, and must, bear a just propor tion to the total amount of property, the possession of which constitutes the ability to pay. The direct tendency, then, of this amendment, is to give political power to the wealthy in proportion to their wealth, and to inflict political insignificance on the poor in proportion to their poverty. To confer on an electoral district, containing fou electors but great wealth, equal power with another district containing many electors but little wealth. To give to the few, who are rich, a controkover the many who are poor. So that if Stephen Girard, the great millionaire of the north, were to become à citizen of Virginia, and fiscal ingenuity could reach his abounding wealth, the direct or apparent operation of this amendment, would be to augment incalculably, the political power of the county he should select as his residence, while its real effect would probably, if not certainly, be, to confer all the accumulated mass of power, thus artificially produced, on Stephen Girard himself. If Richmond, in the vicissitudes of humau affairs, should chance at a future day, to attain the opulence which is even now possessed by the commercial metropolis of the Union, the operation of the amendment would be, to give it uncontrolled power over the legislation of the Com

monwealth.

But, Sir, without commenting further on the practical operation of the proposed amendment, let us apply to it the same test to which we have subjected the resolution of the Committee. Does it accord with the principles of the " Declaration of Rights;" with the principles to which the gentleman from Culpeper, in common with us all, has given, but yesterday, the sanction of his approving vote?

It will be perceived, on the slightest examination, that it violates, not one only of those principles, which I have mentioned, but every one.

1. It repudiates the doctrine that the people are the only legitimate source and foun tain of political power, and that "all power is derived from the people," and makes property one of the sources of power, and declares it to be derived, in part, from property.

2. It denies the correctness of the principle, that all the electors in the Commonwealth are equal in political rights, by conferring on a small number of wealthy electors, congregated in one electoral district, the same power that it confers on a large number of poor electors, congregated in another electoral district,