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Population Statistics Used in the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Paterson's Table of State Populations

Saturday, 09 June 1787

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William Paterson's notes contained a table of state populations as used for tax quotas. Farrand writes that,

"Among the Wilson papers in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, upon the first page of the copy of the resolutions used by the Committee of Detail, is a duplicate of this document except that: the names of states are abbreviated; New Jersey’s quota is given as 166,316; and in the column of “Delegates”, instead of a line after the number for Pennsylvania, lines are drawn after the numbers for New York and South Carolina and after the total of “90”, “24” and “25¼” have been crossed out, and then “12” written, showing that an estimate had been made of the total number of the delegates for the seven and five smaller states."

Description

William Paterson's notes contained a table of state populations as used for tax quotas. Farrand writes that,

"Among the Wilson papers in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, upon the first page of the copy of the resolutions used by the Committee of Detail, is a duplicate of this document except that: the names of states are abbreviated; New Jersey’s quota is given as 166,316; and in the column of “Delegates”, instead of a line after the number for Pennsylvania, lines are drawn after the numbers for New York and South Carolina and after the total of “90”, “24” and “25¼” have been crossed out, and then “12” written, showing that an estimate had been made of the total number of the delegates for the seven and five smaller states."

Content

States. Quota of Tax. Delegates.
Virginia 512,974 16.
Massachusetts 448,854 14.
Pennsylvania 410,378 12.¾. 42¾
Maryland 283,034 8.¾.
Connecticut 264,182 8-
New York 256,486 8-
North Carolina 218,012 6¾.
South Carolina 192,366 6-
New Jersey 166,716 5-
New Hampshire 105,416 3¼.
Rhode Island 64,636 2-
Delaware 44,886 1¼.
Georgia 32,060 1.
90-

Commentaries (0)

None

Text format

text/text

Copyright information

Paterson's Notes (Max Farrand, 1911)