美国学生历史 第64期:制定宪法(4)

 　　184. Compromise as to Apportionment. 184．关于众议院名额分配的折中方案

　　Should the members of the House of Representatives be distributed among the states according to population? 应该根据各州的人口来分配众议院的代表人数吗？

　　At first sight the answer seemed to be perfectly¹ clear. 咋看起来对此的回答似乎是一目了然，

　　But the real question was, should slaves who had no vote be counted as a part of the population? 但是真正的问题在于，没有投票权的奴隶是否应该算作人口的一部分？

　　It was finally agreed that the slaves should be counted at three-fifths of their real number. 最终各州于此的共识是以实际数量的五分之三来计算奴隶，

　　This rule was called the "federal ratio." 这个规定被叫做"联邦比例"，

　　The result of this rule was to give the Southern slave states representation in Congress out of all proportion to their voting population. 这个规定导致国会给南部蓄奴各州的代表数与这些州的投票人数极不成比例。

　　185. Compromise as to the Slave-Trade. 185．对奴隶交易的折中方案

　　When the subject of the powers to be given to Congress came to be discussed, there was even greater excitement. 当讨论到要给予国会的权力时，引起了更大的争议。

　　The Northerners wanted Congress to have power to regulate commerce. 北方各州的代表想让国会有管理贸易的权力，

　　But the Southerners opposed it because they feared Congress would use this power to put an end to the slave-trade. 但是，南方各州的代表反对，他们的理由是害怕国会用这个权力来结束奴隶买卖。

　　John Rutledge of South Carolina even went so far as to say that unless this question was settled in favor of the slaveholders, the slave states would "not be parties to the Union." 南卡罗莱纳的约翰o拉特利奇更为激进地说，除非问题按照奴隶主的意愿解决，有奴隶的各个州"就不加入联邦"。

　　In the end this matter also was compromised by providing that Congress could not prohibit the slave-trade until 1808. 最终这个问题也是通过折中解决，即提出国会在1808年之前不会禁止奴隶买卖。

　　These were the three great compromises. 这是三个伟大的折中，

　　But there were compromises on so many smaller points that we cannot even mention them here. 但是，还有一些关于众多小问题的折中，我们在此不一一详述。

1 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。