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 con"stitution, 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,

Anti-democratic tendencies of the convention.

there was one question on which they were
unit. If there was
a
a man in the
Convention who did not believe that a

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.

the United States labor have their origin in the turbulence and follies of democracy," And Madison, in

words that ought to be treasured in the memory of every American voter: "In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation, in which case the rights of property and public liberty will not be secure in their hands-or, what is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side."

Said Roger Sherman: "The people should have as little to do as may be about the government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled." Said General Pinckney: "An election of either branch by the people, scattered as they are in many states, is totally impracticable. I differ from gentlemen who think that a choice by the people would be a better guard against bad measures, than by the legislatures. A majority of the people in South Carolina were notoriously for paper money, as a legal tender; the legislature had refused to make it a legal tender. The reason was that the latter had some sense of character, and were restrained by that consideration."

So undemocratic was the Convention that there were many who opposed the election of the house of representatives by the people. Elbridge Gerry was emphatic in his opposition. "The people do not want virtue,” said he, "but are the dupes of pretended patriots."

The government, therefore, which the convention wished to provide for was a republic, not a representative democracy. They wished to provide for a government in which the power of the people would be exhausted in choosing some of the men who were to administer it and who were to execute its laws. They wished to have a government "that should rest on the solid foundation of the people." But the idea that the people should elect all of the officers of the government, representatives, senators, executive, members of the Supreme Court, still more, that the officers of the government should be guided by anything but the constitution and their own judgment, was entirely foreign to the Convention. In 1789, when the constitution had gone into effect, and the question of amendments to it was being discussed, one was offered asserting an express right in the people to instruct their representatives. It is safe to say that such a proposition would have found no favor in the Convention.

We shall see more clearly the real nature of the government, which the Convention intended to create, if we look at the constitution in the light of proposals strongly advocated by some of its members. Some of them wanted the power of the people limited to the election of the members of the state legislatures; the state legislatures to choose members of the lower house of Congress; the lower house, the senate, and the two houses, the executive. So universal was the distrust of