The republican Constitution of 1791 was not founded upon numbers only, but upon numbers, territory, and taxation combined,--a mixed system, which excluded the true idea of personal equality.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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Here, indeed, is the Rule of Three; but the idea originally came from our country.
I mean to say that the representation in the lower House of Congress was apportioned according to numbers; and this is the Rule of Three.
A practical question arises here, whether this rule should be applied to the whole body of population, including women, children, and unnaturalized foreigners, or to those only who exercise the electoral franchise,--in other words, to…
But it is easy to determine what the principle of the Representative System requires.
Since its object is to provide a practical substitute for meetings of the people, it should be founded, in just proportion, on the numbers of those who, according to our Constitution, can take part in those meetings,--that is, upon the…
The representative body should be a miniature or abridgment of the electoral body,--in other words, of those allowed to participate in public affairs.
The Rule of Three, then, applied to voters, seems to me sound; but whether applied to voters or population, it is the true rule of representation, and stands on irreversible principles.
Under it, every man will have a representative each year, and every man will have the same representative power as every other man.
In this respect it recognizes a darling idea of our institutions, which cannot be disowned without weakening their foundations.
It gives to the great principle of human equality a new expansion and application.
It makes all men, in the enjoyment of the electoral franchise, whatever their diversities of intelligence, education, or wealth, or wheresoever they may be within the borders of the Commonwealth, whether in small town or in populous city…
I know that there are persons, Sir, who do not hesitate to assail the whole doctrine of the equality of men, as enunciated in our Declaration of Independence and in our Bill of Rights.
Now I am not prepared to class the electoral franchise among inherent, natural rights, common to the whole human family, without distinction of age, sex, or residence; but I do say, that from the equality of men, which we so proudly…
For myself, I accept this principle, and, just so far and just so soon as possible, I would be guided by it in the system of Representation.
This rule is founded in Nature, and not in Art,--on natural bodies, and not on artificial bodies,--on men, and not on corporations,--on souls, and not on petty geographical lines.
On this account it may be called a natural rule, and, when once established, will become fixed and permanent, beyond all change or desire of change.
And, fourthly, this rule removes, to every possible extent, those opportunities of political partiality and calculation, in the adjustment of representation, which are naturally incident to any departure from precise rule.
It was beautifully said of Law by the greatest intellect of Antiquity, that it is mind without passion; and this very definition I would extend to a rule which, with little intervention from human will, is graduated by numbers, passionless…
No such abuse prevailed in our municipalities; and this political health at home, Sir, and not the incident of exclusive representation in a distant Legislature, has been the secret of their strength.
Now, Sir, while confessing and regretting the present predominance of the cities, I must be permitted to question the propriety of the proposed remedy.
No student of history can fail to perceive that they have performed different parts at different stages of the world.
The armed feudalism is overthrown; but it is impossible not to see that it has yielded to a commercial feudalism, whose seat is in the cities, and which, in its way, is hardly less selfish and exacting than the feudalism of the iron hand.
I make no impeachment of individuals, but simply indicate those combined influences proceeding from the potent Spirit of Trade, which, though unlike that Spirit of the Lord where is Liberty, is not inconsistent with the most enlarged…
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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