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frustrated the design by starting the young republic upon principles of administration which regarded men, first and last, as base and incapable. To him we owe, more than to any other man, unless it be Madison, the Constitution itself; but to him we owe also the lost opportunity of making the experiment which might have proved that men are not base and incapable, and that government may have a better foundation than the fears and sordidness of human nature. It may be that the notion was a visionary one, but thousands of upright men, whose self-sacrifice had earned for them the right to make the trial, protested ardently against the young republic being invested with a character with which they had not endued it, and earnestly demanded an administration upon far different principles. This opportunity, the only one the anglican race has had since the days of the English Commonwealth, was denied to them and to the world, and the worst form of social constitution known to men, plutocracy, was forced upon the Americans. From Hamilton's time to ours, although more than once strenuously combated, the march of plutocracy has been onward, until to-day nothing opposes its resistless sway except the mutterings of revolution which are ominous of a violent reorganization of society.

The regret at letting this opportunity slip is aggravated by the knowledge we of our day have, that our world was on the eve of the most remarkable expansion of material wealth known to men. Within a few years the force of steam was utilized and the cotton gin invented; and within three generations all the great discoveries and inventions have occurred by which the energies of men in the XIXth century have

been concentrated upon material development. To him who regards the Hamiltonian policy as a fortuitous as well as a wise policy, and finds in it the special providence which was to devote this youthful continent to "the spirit of the nineteenth century," nothing can be said. But he who regards man as a creature compounded of good as well as bad, who looks upon government as a science still susceptible to development, and who hopes that every rising sun will bring the world nearer to a time when evil will not be an acknowledged constituent of administration, must bitterly regret that when the opportunity existed, the man to take advantage of it was not in power. It is sad to think that the experiment was handed over to the mobs of the most excitable people, and of the one least subject to self-control since the days of the Athenians: yet, when we see what the French Revolution has done for the human race, what infinite good might have been expected from a fair trial by an anglican representative-democracy! Even had the experiment proved disappointing, our condition could have been no worse than it had been; the resources of a new country, multiplied by invention and discovery, might have mitigated the evils of failure, and men the world over would have been in possession of that rarest and richest political wealth, knowledge of the practical working of a new idea.

CHAPTER X.

CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION.

The Ordinance of 1787 — The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions— The Missouri Compromise.

MARYLAND instructed her delegates, in 1778, not to agree to the Confederation, unless the northwestern territory "should be considered as a common property, subject to be parceled out by Congress into free, convenient, and independent governments, in such manner and at such times as the wisdom of that assembly shall hereafter direct." Inasmuch as this territory was the subject of divers claims, especially of that of Virginia, which embraced nearly all the land, and the claimants were not disposed to surrender these claims, the Articles of Confederation remained unadopted until the first of March, 1781; upon this day, Maryland ratified the Articles. She did so because New York had resigned her dubious claim in favor of "such of the United States as shall become members of the federal alliance;" Connecticut had resigned her claim; Virginia had offered conditionally to cede the one she had to the territory northwest of the Ohio River; and because Congress had showed itself ready to complete the programme by the declaration that the said territories should be "formed into distinct republican states, which should become members of the Federal Union, and have the

same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence as the other states." 1

Pressure had to be brought to bear upon Virginia whose conditional offer to cede had not been accepted by Congress, but at last she yielded,2 and the vast regions known as "the Northwest Territory" fell under the disposition of the United States. Jefferson, shortly afterward, as chairman of a special committee, reported a plan for the temporary government of all the western territory including the Northwest, and this was one of the last official acts performed by him before setting sail as minister to France. This plan, which contemplated the future erection of sixteen states, included the following provisions: that "after the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states other than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This prospective prohibition was to cover all the states, as well those south of the Ohio River as those north of it. The six northern states voted for this prohibition: North Carolina was divided; Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina voted against it, and New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia were unrepresented. One state more in its favor, and the prohibition of slavery on the eastern slope of the Valley of the Mississippi that was in possession of the United States would have been effected. As it stood, the proviso was lost for lack

1 October 10, 1780; Journals of Congress, III, 535, 282.

2 October 20, 1783.

8 Hening's Statutes, 564–7; Congress accepted, March 1, 1784. Massachusetts ceded, April 19, 1785, and Congress accepted Connecticut's cession, May 26, 1786, but Connecticut held on to the Western Reserve until 1800. South Carolina ceded in 1787.

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of the seven votes requisite to a majority. The rest of the report was adopted.

In 1785 Rufus King, of Massachusetts, again presented Jefferson's prohibition, with the omission of the words "after the year 1800," and with a substitution of the words "personally guilty" for " duly convicted." This made the prohibition of slavery immediate instead of prospective. The resolution as amended was sent to a committee, and thence was favorably reported by a vote of eight states to three, but it was not acted upon.

Towards the close of the following year, the government of the territory was again taken up by Congress, but the scope of the committee was limited to the northwestern portion. It was this committee which, with Nathan Dane as Chairman, framed the famous "Ordinance of 1787."1 Jefferson's prohibition, made immediate instead of prospective, was "agreed to without opposition," says Dane, who expressed his surprise in a letter to King. There were three reasons for this: one was that the prohibition would affect one half only of the territory embraced in Jefferson's proviso, and this half the northern one, which lay in latitudes already demonstrated by experience to be uncongenial to the maintenance of slavery. The South really gave up nothing. Another reason was, the accompaniment of a fugitive slave clause (the first one in our history) to the prohibition. The last reason was one which had a cogent effect upon a Congress which legislated constantly in sight of an empty treasury; it was that the Ohio Land Company stood ready to take five million 1 Adopted, July 13, 1787.