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the confederation; and his decision was likely to have great weight in the councils of his own commonwealth. When his royalist father, attorney-general of Virginia, took refuge with the English, the son cleaved to his native land. At his own request and the solicitation of Richard Henry Lee, Washington received him as an aid during the siege of Boston. In 1776 he took a part in the convention for forming the constitution of Virginia; and the convention rewarded his patriotism by electing him at twenty-three years of age attorney-general of Virginia in the place of his father. In 1779 he preceded Madison by a year as a delegate to congress. In the effort for the reform of the confederation, he, with Ellsworth of Connecticut and Varnum of Rhode Island for his associates, was the chairman of the committee appointed to report on the defects of the confederacy and the new powers necessary for its efficiency. In 1786 he was elected governor of Virginia; and now in his thirty-fourth year he was sent to the convention, bringing with him a reputation for ability equal to his high position, and in the race for public honors taking the lead of James Monroe. But with all his merit there was a strain of weakness in his character, so that he was like a soft metal which needs to be held in place by coils of a harder grain than its own. That support he found in Madison, who had urged him to act a foremost part in the convention, and had laid before him the principles on which the new government should be organized; and in Washington, who was unceasing in his monitions and encouragement. Randolph, on his arrival in Philadelphia, at once yielded to their influence, and with them became persuaded that the confederacy was destitute of every energy which a constitution of the United States ought to possess.*

The result was harmony among the Virginia delegates. A plan for a national government, which imbodied the thoughts of Madison, altered and amended by their joint consultations, was agreed to by them all. To Randolph, as the official representative of the state, was unanimously assigned the office of bringing forward the outline which was to be known as the plan of Virginia. This forethought provided in

Randolph to Speaker, 10 October 1787.

season a chart for the voyage, so that the ship, skilfully ballasted and trimmed from the beginning, could be steered through perilous channels to the wished-for haven.

A government founded directly on the people seemed to justify and require a distribution of suffrage in the national legislature according to some equitable ratio. Gouverneur Morris and other members from Pennsylvania in conversation urged the large states to unite from the first in refusing to the smaller states in the federal convention the equal vote which they enjoyed in the congress of the confederacy; but the Virginians, while as the largest state in extent and in numbers they claimed a proportioned legislative suffrage as an essential right which must be asserted and allowed, stifled the project, being of the opinion that the small states would be more willing to renounce this unequal privilege in return for an efficient government, than to disarm themselves before the battle without an equivalent.*

On the seventeenth, South Carolina appeared on the floor; on the eighteenth, New York; on the twenty-first, Delaware; on the twenty-second, North Carolina. Of the delegates, some were for half-way measures from fear of displeasing the people; others were anxious and doubting. Just before there were enough to form a quorum, Washington, standing self-collected in the midst of them, his countenance more than usually solemn, his eye seeming to look into futurity, said: "It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God." +

On the twenty-fifth, New Jersey, completing the seven states needed to form a house, was represented by William Churchill Houston, who had been detained by illness, and was too weak to remain long. There were from the South four states, from the North, three; from the South, nineteen members, from

* Madison Papers, edited by Gilpin, 726. Stereotyped reprint of Elliot, 125. + Oration by Gouverneur Morris upon the death of Washington, 31 December 1799, pp. 20, 21. Morris was, in May 1787, present in Philadelphia, and relates what he witnessed.

the North, ten. At the desire of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Washington was unanimously elected president of the convention. During the organization it was noticed that the delegates from Delaware were prohibited from changing the article in the confederation establishing the equality of votes among the states.*

On the twenty-eighth, the representation was increased to nine states by the arrival of Massachusetts and Maryland. A letter was read from men of Providence, Rhode Island, among them John Brown, Jabez Bowen, Welcome Arnold, and William Barton, explaining why their state would send no delegates to the convention, and hopefully pledging their best exertions to effect the ratification of its proceedings. The letter was forwarded and supported by Varnum, a member from Rhode Island in congress.

The delegates from Maryland, chosen at a time when the best men of the state were absorbed in a domestic struggle against new issues of paper money, and its senate by its stubborn resistance was estranged from the house, did not adequately represent its public spirit; yet the majority of them to the last promoted the national union. Of the fifty five in the convention, nine were graduates of Princeton, four of Yale, three of Harvard, two of Columbia, one of Pennsylvania; five, six, or seven had been connected with William and Mary's; Scotland sent one of her sons, a jurist, who had been taught at three of her universities, and Glasgow had assisted to train another; one had been a student in Christ Church, Oxford, and he and three others had been students of law in the Temple. To many in the assembly the work of the great French magistrate on the "Spirit of Laws," of which Washington with his own hand had copied an abstract by Madison, was the favorite manual; some of them had made an analysis of all federal governments in ancient and modern times, and a few were well versed in the best English, Swiss, and Dutch writers on government. They had immediately before them the example of Great Britain; and they had a still better school of political wisdom in the republican constitutions of their several * Gilpin, 723; Elliot, 124.

Gilpin, 727; Elliot, 125, and Appendix No. 1.

states, which many of them had assisted to frame. Altogether they formed "the goodliest fellowship of" lawgivers "whereof this world holds record." In their standing rules they unanimously forbade any registry to be made of the votes of individuals, so that they might, without reproach or observation, mutually receive and impart instruction; and they sat with closed doors, lest the publication of their debates should rouse the country to obstinate conflicts before they themselves should have reached their conclusions.

On the twenty-ninth, Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, opened the business of the convention in this wise: "To prevent the fulfilment of the prophecies of the downfall of the United States, it is our duty to inquire into the defects of the confederation and the requisite properties of the government now to be framed; the danger of the situation and its remedy.

"The confederation was made in the infancy of the science of constitutions, when the inefficiency of requisitions was unknown; when no commercial discord had arisen among states: when no rebellion like that in Massachusetts had broken out; when foreign debts were not urgent; when the havoc of paper money had not been foreseen; when treaties had not been violated; and when nothing better could have been conceded by states jealous of their sovereignty. But it offered no security against foreign invasion, for congress could neither prevent nor conduct a war, nor punish infractions of treaties or of the law. of nations, nor control particular states from provoking war. The federal government has no constitutional power to check a quarrel between separate states; nor to suppress a rebellion in any one of them; nor to establish a productive impost; nor to counteract the commercial regulations of other nations; nor to defend itself against encroachments of the states. From the manner in which it has been ratified in many of the states, it cannot be claimed to be paramount to the state constitutions; so that there is a prospect of anarchy from the inherent laxity of the government. As the remedy, the government to be established must have for its basis the republican principle."

He then proposed fifteen resolutions, which he explained one by one.

"The articles of confederation ought to be so corrected and enlarged as to accomplish the objects proposed by their institution; namely, 'common defence, security of liberty, and general welfare.'

"The rights of suffrage in the national legislature ought to be proportioned to the quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants.

"The national legislature ought to consist of two branches, of which the members of the first or democratic house ought to be elected by the people of the several states; of the second, by those of the first, out of persons nominated by the individual legislatures.

"The national legislature, of which each branch ought to possess the right of originating acts, ought to enjoy the legis lative rights vested in congress by the confederation, and moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States might be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation; to negative all laws passed by the several states contravening the articles of union; and to call forth the force of the union against any member of the union failing to fulfil its duty under the articles thereof.

"A national executive, chosen by the national legislature and ineligible a second time, ought to enjoy the executive rights vested in congress by the confederation, and a general authority to execute the national laws.

"The executive and a convenient number of the national judiciary ought to compose a council of revision, with authority to examine every act of the national legislature before it shall operate.

"A national judiciary ought to be established; to consist of supreme and inferior tribunals; to be chosen by the national legislature; to hold their offices during good behavior, with jurisdiction to hear and determine all piracies and felonies on the high seas; captures from an enemy; cases in which foreigners and citizens, a citizen of one state and a citizen of another state, may be interested; cases which respect the collection of the national revenue; impeachments of national officers; and questions which may involve the national peace and harmony.

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