of the necessity of the Union to their safety and prosperity; of course, a strong desire of a change, and a predisposition to receive well the propositions of the Convention." But while the Constitution came before the people with this conviction and this predisposition in its favor, yet when its opponents, in addition to their positive objections to what it did contain, could point to what it did not embrace, and could say that it proposed to establish a government of great power, without providing for rights of primary importance, and without any declaration of the cardinal maxims of liberty which the people had from the first been accustomed to incorporate with their state constitutions; and while the local interests, the sectional feelings, and the separate policy, real or supposed, of different states furnished such a variety of means for defeating its adoption by the necessary number of nine states, we may not wonder that its friends should have been doubtful of the issue. "It is almost arrogance," said the same anxious observer, "in so complicated a subject, depending so entirely upon the incalculable fluctuations of the human passions, to attempt even a conjecture about the result."

2

'Hamilton, Works, II. 419, 420.

Ibid., 421.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

RATIFICATIONS OF DELAWARE, PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, GEORGIA, AND CONNECTICUT, WITHOUT OBJECTION.-CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1787.-BEGINNING OF THE Year 1788.—RATIFICATION OF MASSACHUSETTS, THE SIXTH STATE, WITH PROPOSITIONS OF AMENDMENT. -RATIFICATION OF MARYLAND, WITHOUT OBJECTION.-SOUTH CAROLINA, THE EIGHTH STATE, ADOPTS, AND PROPOSES AMENDMENTS.

THE first state that ratified the Constitution, although its convention was not the first to assemble, was Delaware. It was a small, compact community, with the northerly portion of its territory lying near the city of Philadelphia, with which its people had constant and extensive intercourse. Its public men were intelligent and patriotic. In the national Convention it had contended with great spirit for the interests of the smaller states, and its people now had the sagacity and good sense to perceive that they had gained every reasonable security for their peculiar rights. The public press of Philadelphia friendly to the Constitution furnished the means of understanding its merits, and the discussions in the convention of Pennsylvania, which assembled before that of Delaware, threw a flood of light over the whole subject, which the people of Delaware did not fail to regard. Their delegates unanimously ratified and adopted the Constitution on the 7th of December.

The convention of Pennsylvania met, before that of any of the other states, at Philadelphia, on the 20th of November. It was the second state in the Union in population. Its chief city was perhaps the first in the Union in refinement and wealth, and had often been the scene of great political events of the utmost interest and importance to the whole country. There had sat, eleven years before, that illustrious Congress of deputies from the thirteen colonies, who had declared the independence of America, had made Washington commander-in-chief of her armies, and had

given her struggle for freedom a name throughout the world. There the Revolutionary Congress had continued, with a short interruption, to direct the operations of the war. There the alli

ance with France was ratified, in 1778. There the Articles of Confederation were finally carried into full effect, in 1781. There, within six months afterwards, the Congress received intelligence of the surrender of Cornwallis, and walked in procession to one of the churches of the city, to return thanks to God for a victory which in effect terminated the war. There the instructions for the treaty of peace were given, in 1782, and there the Constitution of the United States had been recently framed. For more than thirteen years, since the commencement of the Revolution, and with only occasional intervals, the people of Philadelphia had been accustomed to the presence of the most eminent statesmen of the country, and had learned, through the influences which had gone forth from their city, to embrace in their contemplation the interests of the Union.

They placed in the state convention, that was to consider the proposed Constitution of the United States, one of the wisest and ablest of its framers-James Wilson. The modesty of his subsequent career, and the comparatively little attention that has been bestowed by succeeding generations upon the personal exertions that were made in framing and establishing the Constitution, must be regarded as the causes that have made his reputation, at this day, less extensive and general than his abilities and usefulness might have led his contemporaries to expect that it would be. Yet the services which he rendered to the country, first in assisting in the preparation of the Constitution, and afterwards in securing its adoption by the state of Pennsylvania, should place his name high upon the list of its benefactors. He had not the political genius which gave Hamilton such a complete mastery over the most complex subjects of government, and which enabled him, when the Constitution had been adopted, to give it a development in practice that made it even more successful than its theory alone could have allowed any one to regard as probable; nor had he the talent of Madison for debate and for constitutional analysis; but in the comprehensiveness of his views, and in his perception of the necessities of the country, he was not their inferior, and he was throughout one of their most efficient and best-informed coadjutors.

He had to encounter, in the convention of the state, a body of men a majority of whom were not unfriendly to the Constitution, but among whom there was a minority very hard to be conciliated. In the counties which lay west of the Susquehanna-the same region which afterwards, in Washington's administration, became the scene of an insurrection against the authority of the general government-there was a rancorous, active, and determined opposition. Mr. Wilson, being the only member of the state convention who had taken part in the framing of the Constitution, was obliged to take the lead in explaining and defending it. His qualifications for this task were ample. He had been a very important and useful member of the national Convention; he had read every publication of importance, on both sides of the question, that had appeared since the Constitution was published, and his legal and historical knowledge was extensive and accurate. No man succeeded better than he did, in his arguments on that occasion, in combating the theory that a state government possessed the whole political sovereignty of the people of the state. However true it might be, he said, in England, that the Parliament possesses supreme and absolute power, and can make the constitution what it pleases, in America it has been incontrovertible since the Revolution that the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power is in the people before they make a constitution, and remains in them after it is made. To control the power and conduct of the legislature by an overruling constitution was an improvement in the science and practice of government reserved to the American states; and at the foundation of this practice lies the right to change the constitution at pleasure—a right which no positive institution can ever take from the people. When they have made a state constitution they have bestowed on the government created by it a certain portion of their power; but the fee simple of their power remains in themselves.

Mr. Wilson was equally clear in accounting for the omission to insert a bill of rights in the Constitution of the United States. In a government, he observed, consisting of enumerated powers, such as was then proposed for the United States, a bill of rights, which is an enumeration of the powers reserved by the people, must either be a perfect or an imperfect statement of the powers and privileges reserved. To undertake a perfect enumeration of

the civil rights of mankind is to undertake a very difficult and hazardous, and perhaps an impossible task; yet if the enumeration is imperfect, all implied power seems to be thrown into the hands of the government, on subjects in reference to which the authority of government is not expressly restrained, and the rights of the people are rendered less secure than they are under the silent operation of the maxim that every power not expressly granted remains in the people. This, he stated, was the view taken by a large majority of the national Convention, in which no direct proposition was ever made, according to his recollection, for the insertion of a bill of rights.' There is, undoubtedly, a general truth in this argument, but, like many general truths in the construction of governments, it may be open to exceptions when applied to particular subjects or interests. It appears to have been, for the time, successful; probably because the opponents of the Constitution, with whom Mr. Wilson was contending, did not bring forward specific propositions for the declaration of those particular rights which were made the subjects of special action in other state conventions.

Besides a very thorough discussion of these great subjects, Mr. Wilson entered into an elaborate examination and defence of the whole system proposed in the Constitution. He was most ably seconded in his efforts by Thomas McKean, then chief-justice of Pennsylvania and afterwards its governor, the greater part of whose public life had been passed in the service of Delaware, his native state, and who had always been a strenuous advocate of the interests of the smaller states, but who found himself satisfied with the provision for them made by the Constitution for the construction of the Senate of the United States." "I have gone," said he, "through the circle of office in the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of government; and from all my study, observation, and experience, I must declare

This was a mistake. On the 12th of September, Messrs. Gerry and Mason moved for a committee to prepare a bill of rights, but the motion was lost by an equal division of the states. Elliot, V. 538.

Mr. McKean, although his residence was at Philadelphia, represented the lower counties of Delaware in Congress from 1774 to 1783. In 1777 he was made chief-justice of Pennsylvania, being at the same time a member of Congress and president of the state of Delaware.