IV. A new convention might be held at the end of seven CHAPTER years, provided a majority of the people, at two successive annual elections, voted in favor of it. This provision, 1792. when it came to be acted upon, produced some important modifications, as we shall see hereafter, in the Constitution of Kentucky. The very limited authority bestowed directly on the people presents a striking contrast to the Constitution of Vermont, and serves as one among many other proofs that, however Virginia and the states settled from it might exceed in theoretical democracy, the practical application of that theory was far more efficiently carried out in New England. Kentucky being thus organized as a state, Isaac Shelby was chosen the first governor. Simultaneously with the coming in of this new state, the Constitutions of Delaware and New Hampshire underwent revisions. The changes in Delaware corresponded very much with those recently made in Pennsylvania. The president became a governor, elected by the people for three years, with an appointing power similar to that of the governor of Pennsylvania, but without any veto on legislative acts. The late Legislative Council became a Senate, the Executive Council being altogether dispensed with. The provision contained in the Constitution of Pennsylvania, authorizing the truth to be given in evidence in prosecutions for libel, was also copied into the Constitution of Delaware. The changes in New Hampshire were less materiallittle more, in fact, than a change of title for the office of chief magistrate from president to governor. As under the Constitution of 1783, modeled after that of Massachusetts, the legislative authority was still vested in a Senate and House of Representatives. The twelve senators were distributed among the counties. Each town CHAPTER having one hundred and fifty ratable polls, that is, male IV. inhabitants over sixteen years of age, was entitled to 1792. one representative, and another for every addition to the population of three hundred ratable polls. There was an executive council of five members, one for each coun. ty, without whose advice and consent the governor could not act. In all appointments to office, the governor and council had a negative on each other. The judges were appointed for good behavior. The governor and counselors, as well as the members of the General Court, were chosen annually. Representatives were required to possess property to the value of $333 33, one half, at least, in lands; senators must have twice that qualification, the whole in lands; the governor must have property, half of it in land, to the amount of $1666 66; and all these officers were required to be of the Protestant religion. All tax-paying inhabitants were entitled to vote. CHAPTER V. ALLEGED MONARCHICAL CONSPIRACY. BASIS OF PARTY V. SINCE Washington's accession to the office of presi- CHAPTER dent, he had experienced two severe and even dangerous fits of sickness. He complained of a growing decline of 1792. strength, and had intimated to his cabinet his design to retire at the close of his present term of office, which, indeed, had been his intention from the first. tirement, however, was warmly combated from very opposite quarters; and the reasons respectively urged throw a strong light on the politics of the times. His re Though Jefferson had dwelt with great emphasis on the re-eligibility of the president as a strong objection to the Constitution, he did not hesitate, very soon after the adjournment of Congress, to address a letter to Washington at Mount Vernon, whither he had retired for some temporary repose, strongly pressing upon him not to decline serving a second term. The want of confidence and serenity in the public May 13. mind, growing out of causes in which Washington was no ways personally mixed up, was alleged as a reason why he should suffer himself to be re-elected. "Though these causes have been hackneyed in detail in the public papers," so the letter continued, and it might have specified as the leader in this business Freneau's Gazette, V. CHAPTER of which Jefferson himself was believed to be at once patron and prompter, "it may not be amiss, in order to 1790. calculate the effect they are capable of producing, to take a view of them in the mass, giving to each the form, real or imaginary, under which they have been presented. "It has been urged, then, that a public debt, greater than we can possibly pay before other causes of adding new debt to it will occur, has been artificially created by adding together the whole amount of the debtor and creditor sides of accounts, instead of taking only their balances, which could have been paid off in a short timė; that this accumulation of debt has taken forever out of our power those easy sources of revenue which, applied to the ordinary necessities and exigencies of government, would have answered them habitually, and covered us from habitual murmurings against taxes and tax-gatherers, reserving extraordinary calls for those extraordinary occasions which would animate the people to meet them; that, though the calls for money have been no greater than we must generally expect for the same or equiva. lent exigencies, yet we are already obliged to strain the impost till it produces clamor, and will produce evasion, and war on our citizens to collect it, and even to resort to an excise law, of odious character with the people, partial in its operation, unproductive, unless enforced by arbitrary and vexatious means, and committing the authority of government in parts where resistance is most probable and coercion least practicable. "They cite propositions in Congress and suspect others, still to increase the mass of debt. They say that by borrowing at two thirds of the interest, we might have paid off the principal in two thirds of the time; but that from this we are precluded by its being made irredeemable but in small portions and in long terms; V. and that this irredeemable quality was given to it for CHAPTER the avowed purpose of inviting its transfer to foreign countries. They predict that this transfer of the prin- 1792. cipal, when completed, will occasion an exportation of three millions of dollars annually for the interest, a drain of coin of which, as there has been no example, no calculation can be made of its consequences; and that the banishment of our coin will be completed by the creation of ten millions of paper money in the form of bank bills now issuing into circulation. They think the ten or twelve per cent. annual profits paid to the lenders of this paper medium are taken out of the pockets of the people, who would have had without interest the coin it is banishing; that all the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming-table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture, where it would have produced addition to the common mass; that it nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality; that it has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the Legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters, whichever way it is directed; that this corrupt squadron deciding the voice of the Legislature have manifested their disposition to get rid of the limitations imposed by the Constitution on the general Legislature, limitations on the faith of which the States acceded to that instrument; that the ultimate object of all this is to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the English Constitution is to be the model. That this was contemplated in the Convention is no secret, because its partisans have made none of it. To effect it then was impracticable; but they are still eager after their |