500
Opinion of Thomas, J.
The Framers were quite familiar not only with various census-taking methods but also with impediments to their successful completion. The Continental Congress had already used population estimates to make decisions about taxation, and such efforts were met with resistance. In 1775, the Continental Congress had ascertained population estimates for the Colonies in order to apportion the taxes and costs of the Revolutionary War. Pitkin 583. See also Halacy 30-31 ("Debts incurred in the Revolutionary War hastened the ordering of a standard form of census. A census of the colonies had been ordered, but some of them never complied, and the rest did so in different ways"). New Hampshire in particular complained that the estimate of its population for the purposes of calculating Revolutionary War costs was too high. Pitkin 583. It had "caused an actual enumeration to be . . . made, by which it appeared, that the number of her inhabitants" was 20,000 lower than the estimate. Ibid. See also Brief for Appellants 47. New Hampshire petitioned the Continental Congress to change the amount of taxation. New Hampshire's effort was in vain, because Congress "refused to alter her proportion of her taxes on that account." Ibid. See also 10 New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers 580 (reprint 1973) ("[T]he [proportion of taxes assigned New Hampshire by Congress in 1781] is too high by a very considerable sum, that by our numbers which were taken in the year 1775 by the selectmen of the several Towns & Parishes & Return made under Oath . . . this proportion will appear much too large").
B
The Framers knew that the calculation of populations could be and often were skewed for political or financial purposes. Debate about apportionment and the census consequently focused for the most part on creating a standard that would limit political chicanery. While the Framers did not extensively discuss the method of census-taking, many
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