delegates became associate justices of the court. Nine were cabinet ministers. The members, in the aggregate, numbered about seventeen hundred, of whom upwards of three hundred served in Congress- the greater part under the Constitution. The State Legislatures enrolled more than Congress. Some became Governors, and a greater number became members of the State judiciary. Twenty-seven were signers of the Declaration of Independence; fourteen, of the Articles of Confederation; and of the thirty-nine who signed the Constitution of the United States, one-third were members of State conventions. Witherspoon signed the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the constitution of New Jersey. Franklin and George Clymer were signers of the Declaration, the Constitution of the United States, and the first constitution of Pennsylvania; Franklin was president of the convention which made it. By a curious coincidence, George Read signed the first constitution of Delaware, as president of the convention, and, with Franklin, the Declaration and the Constitution of the United States. James Wilson was a signer of the Declaration, the national Constitution, and the second constitution of Pennsylvania. Gouverneur Morris signed the constitution of New York, the Articles, and the Constitution of the United States. Roger Sherman, who has the unique distinction of signing our three great state papers—the Declaration, the Articles, and the Constitution-was a member of Congress when the Connecticut Legislature

Our Revolutionary Law-givers

adopted the bill of rights of 1776. Thus it appears that no one signed these great papers and a State constitution also. Richard Henry Lee might have stood in that unique place in history. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the constitution of Virginia, the Articles of Confederation, and was elected a delegate to the federal convention, but declined to serve.

To these men was given the unparalleled opportunity of establishing a republican form of government in the new world. When one reflects on the momentous consequences of this act, he may, in some degree, measure the importance and success of their labors. Happy for America that she had such men at so critical a moment in her history. A hundred and fifty years of colonial experience in the elements of representative government contributed to train those whom posterity will always call The Fathers. In ancient times. codes and constitutions were associated with the names of individuals-a Draco, a Lycurgus, a Solon. Three Americans must henceforth take rank among the law-givers-Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence; John Jay, author of the New York constitution of 1777; and John Adams, author of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780. Each derived some help from precedents and the suggestions of colleagues. If we knew as much about the genesis of ancient codes as about that of the American constitutions, Draco, Lycurgus, and Solon might divide their honors with forgotten contempora

ries. Codes and constitutions are naturally composite in their origin. Other forces than the varied membership of a convention helped to work out these constitutions. One constitution influenced another, as Massachusetts influenced New Hampshire; Pennsylvania, Vermont; Virginia, Kentucky; North Carolina, Tennessee—as the fifteen State conventions adopted before 1787 influenced that of the United States, and as this, in turn, influenced all which the commonwealths have since adopted-nearly a hundred in number. From 1776 to 1800 interstate influence was feeble. The survival of what is supposed to be the fittest makes such instruments composite, and has already transformed some into small treatises on government.

All the States had constitutions. South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Vermont had two each before the national Constitution was made. Rhode Island and Connecticut had unwritten constitutions, for they had outgrown their charters, though nominally organized under them. The federal convention made abundant use of this mass of precedent. It cast the supreme law of the United States into the form prevailing in the commonwealths, dividing the powers of government into legislative, executive, and judicial, and, with few exceptions, making the grant of power general. State precedents were followed in calling the national Legislature the Congress, with two branches, styled the Senate and the House of Representatives, also in calling the executive President, and

The Constitution Founded on State Laws

the courts supreme and inferior. The title Presi dent ran back to the first charter of Virginia. The regular retirement of a portion of the Senate, the provision for a census, the right of the House to originate money bills, the President's message, his oath of office, his power to veto, to pardon, to fill vacancies, and to command the army and navy, and the Presidential succession were all suggested from the States. The basis of representation in Congress-that of the States for the Senate and districts for the House-had precedents in the method of choosing the two branches of the Legislature in Virginia and Massachusetts. The Vice-President was a State suggestion. As we have seen, the manner of choosing the Governors varied, being direct in the North and indirect in the South. The convention, therefore, had a fair field for compromise, and fell back on special electors. Maryland, alone of all the States, had an Electoral College, which chose its State Senators. It has been said that this was the model for the Presidential Electoral College. If true, the convention failed to copy the first quality of the precedent. Maryland consists of two parts, the eastern and the western shore, having little in common. To give them an artificial bond and hold the commonwealth together by stronger ties, the Annapolis convention of 1776 devised the choice of the State Senate by an Electoral College. The voters in each county chose two electors every fifth year to meet at Annapolis. Twenty-four constituted a quorum, and were empowered to choose fifteen Senators

"either out of their own body or the people at large." Had the federal convention strictly followed the Maryland precedent, Presidential Electors would vote, not by States, but as an electoral convention, similar to that which nominates the national ticket. Evidently the framers did not aim at consolidation -the dominant idea in the Maryland precedent. It was left to political parties to make the Presidential Electors a unifying body, but in doing so parties have stripped the electors of discretionary power and reduced them to a registering machine. The Maryland method of choosing Senators was really no precedent, except for the mere word"electors." The device adopted in 1787 for choosing the President was original with the convention, was not founded on experience, and has failed to work as planned.

The clause for the rendition of fugitives from justice was a transcript from the New England Confederation of 1643, and conformed with colonial legislation. Provision for the admission of new States was an obvious necessity, and followed a specific clause on the subject in the Ordinance of 1787. To the national judiciary the States contributed the life-tenure and the circuit system, though these had long been the practice in England. Had the commonwealths made judicial offices elective, and the occupancy running for years, and abolished the circuit system, the national Constitution would undoubtedly have done the same. The national Constitution profited by the experience of the commonwealths in legisla