THE CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMAN 203 



proposed the same compromise that had succeeded in 

 Congress four years before ; and Mr. Rutledge, of 

 South Carolina, who had supported him on the former 

 occasion, could hardly do otherwise than come again 

 to his side. It was agreed that in counting population, 

 whether for direct taxation or for representation in the 

 lower house of Congress, five slaves should be reckoned 

 as three individuals. In the history of the formation 

 of our federal Union, this compromise was of cardinal 

 importance. Without it the Union would undoubt- 

 edly have gone to pieces at the outset, and it was for 

 this reason that the northern Abolitionists, Gouverneur 

 Morris and Rufus King, joined with Washington and 

 Madison, and with the pro-slavery Pinckneys, in sub- 

 scribing to it. Some of the evils resulting from this 

 compromise have led historians, writing from the Abo- 

 litionist point of view, to condemn it utterly. Nothing 

 can be clearer, however, than that, in order to secure 

 the adoption of the Constitution, it was absolutely 

 necessary to satisfy South Carolina. This was proved 

 by the course of events in 1788, when there was a 

 strong party in Virginia in favour of a separate con- 

 federacy of Southern states. By South Carolina's 

 prompt ratification of the Constitution, this scheme 

 was completely defeated, and a most formidable ob- 

 stacle to the formation of a more perfect union was 

 removed. Of all the compromises in American his- 

 tory, this of the so-called " three-fifths rule " was prob- 

 ably the most important ; until the beginning of the 

 Civil War, there was hardly a political movement of 

 any consequence that was not affected by it. 



Mr. Madison's services in connection with the 

 founding of our federal government were thus, up to 



