the states were to be represented in proportion to their population, and in voting for president, their power was to be in nearly the same ratio. The government called into being by the new constitution did not, like the Congress of the Confederation, stop at the sacred boundary lines of the states. It boldly crossed the Rubicon; it entered the territory of the states and was declared by the constitution within certain limits, and for certain purposes, the supreme authority there. Most decisive of all, every state that voted for the constitution declared that, in a matter of fundamental importance, a certain majority-nine was the number agreed upon by the convention--could act for the whole. Nine states, said the constitution, and every state, that voted for it, said the same thing, could destroy the government of the entire thirteen. If, in a matter of such moment, a certain majority could act for the whole, why not in any matter? Before the adoption of the constitution the states might put on the airs of sovereignty without making themselves ridiculous. But when they adopted it they tacitly confessed that the crowns of which they had boasted were but the creations of ambitious dreams, for they themselves had acknowledged the supremacy of the real sovereign.* Many members of the Convention knew very well that their action was revolutionary. Patterson, of New *See Burgess' Political Science, vol. 1, chapter II, pp. 98-108, Patterson's Jersey, said, "We ought to keep to our lim- federal scheme. A confederacy supposes sovereignty in the members composing it and sovereignty supposes equality. If we are to be considered as a nation, all state distinctions must be abolished, the whole must be thrown into hotchpot, and when an equal division is made there may be equality of representation." He urged that if the confederacy was radically wrong, it was the duty of the members of the Convention to return to their states and obtain larger powers instead of assuming them without warrant. The friends of the constitution acknowledged in substance the truth of his contention. Gouverneur Morris declared that the Convention was unknown to the confederacy. In tones that must have grated upon the advocate of state sovereignty, he declared that the one people of the United States were the supreme authority, and that in case of an appeal to them, the federal compact might be altered by a majority of its citizens, precisely as the constitution of a particular state may be by a majority of its citizens. Randolph said, "When the salvation of the republic is at stake it would be treason to our trust not to propose what we find necessary." And Wilson said: "We must, in this case, go to the original powers of society. Speech of The house on fire must be extinguished son. without a scrupulous regard to ordinary rights." That was the situation in a nutshell. The house was on fire, but to say that to extinguish it the Convention must go to the original powers of society was to say that the people of the thirteen states constituted one American people, not merely geographically, but politically, and that this was the sovereign whose word was law, and whose dispensing power was absolute. QUESTIONS. 1. In the ratification of the constitution by the Virginia convention in 1788, this sentence occurs: "That the powers granted under this constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." In what sense was the phrase "people of the United States" evidently used? Explain the significance of its use in such a sense. 2. In the Pennsylvania convention in 1787, James Wilson said: "My position is, that in this country the supreme, absolute and uncontrollable power resides in the people at large; that they have vested certain proportions of this power in the state governments; but that the fee simple continues, resides and remains with the body of the people." What did he mean by the "people at large?" State accurately the relation between the "people at large," and, first, the general government, and, second, the state governments? 3. Why did Washington wish to connect the East and the West by means of canals? 4. State the steps that led to the calling of the Annapolis convention. 5. What did the Annapolis convention do? 6. How did the Articles of Confederation provide for their own amendment? 7. What characteristics of the confederation had to remain in any system which could be called a revision of its articles? 8. What led the Convention to disregard them? 9. What constitutes a revolution? 10. Was the Federal Convention a revolutionary body? State your reasons for your answer. 11. Did they assume to be sent to Philadelphia by the American people to make a constitution? 12. How might they have made their action constitutional? 13. Were Patterson and Wilson both right in their contentions? 14. Explain the apparent contradiction? 15. How does the constitution provide for its own amendment? What does that show as to the nature of the American government? 16. If Rhode Island and North Carolina had not adopted the constitution would the general government have had the right to compel them to do it? 17. Burgess says that the Philadelphia Convention "really exercised constituent powers when it framed an entirely new constitution, designated the bodies who should ratify it, and fixed the majority necessary for ratification." What does he mean by "constituent powers?" Is his statement correct? CHAPTER III. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION. UT WHILE the members of the Convention were BUT divided on the question as to whether they should frame a constitution that they had no legal right to make, there was one question on which they were Anti-demo cratic tenden cies of the con- unit. If there was a a man in the Convention who did not believe that a vention. democracy was an impossible form of government, he was discreetly silent. On this point, men like Madison, who, excepting Jefferson, had more to do with organizing the Republican (Democratic) party than any other man, and Elbridge Gerry, Democratic vice-president in Madison's second term, and Dickinson, afterwards a prominent Republican (Democrat) in Delaware, and George Mason, whose devotion to state sovereignty was so strong that he would not sign the constitution and opposed it in the Virginia convention with all his might, were in perfect accord with Alexander Hamilton, from whom they afterwards came to differ as widely as the poles. Said Elbridge Gerry: "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy." Said George Mason: "We have been too democratic." Said Edmund Randolph: "Every one admits that the evils under which *It is scarcely necessary to say that the present Democratic party was originally called Republican. |