contentedly here with councilors, lawyers, farmers, and Murray relatives from Scotland. Through these large rooms sounded footsteps which yet echo in the corridors of time; within them were heard voices which history shall ever hear. The only son of the house, a beautiful, dark-eyed, manly boy, listened so well to what Patrick Henry said, to what the Lees and Jefferson and Washington said, that when his father followed the fortunes of Dunmore, and exiled himself to London, he, Edmund Randolph, cast his lot with the patriots, and sought service on Washington's staff.

Only twenty-two at this time, he seems to have been almost as mature as Alexander Hamilton. To him fell the duty of entertaining Washington's guests, doing the honors of the house. To him was assigned the care of Washington's private affairs, his complicated interests in Virginia.

When the illustrious Peyton Randolph died (1775) his mantle seems to have fallen upon his brilliant nephew; and although Congress pressed office upon him, and Washington reluctantly gave him a furlough from the staff, we find the young lawyer accepting a poorly paid judicial position in Virginia, and serving in the State Convention of 1776. Having served there with Lee, Mason, Henry, Mann, Page, Madison, and Bland, on terms of equality, he became the first attorney-general of reconstructed Virginia, filling the place with con

spicuous ability. In 1780 he was in Congress, and in 1786 he was Governor of his State.

In the preceding January he had been appointed at the head of the commission of eight which the Virginia Assembly selected to meet the commissioners of other States at Annapolis.

The ostensible business of these commissions

was to regulate commerce.

There is no evidence that Edmund Randolph turned his thoughts to imports and custom-house regulations, but there is proof that he immediately began to concentrate his mind upon a new constitution.

His correspondence with Madison and Washington throws a bright light upon the inner workings of the Federalist movement.

Anxious as General Washington had been for a stronger government, he was not at all sanguine. The Annapolis meeting might possibly lead to something, and must therefore be encouraged and attended. When the Philadelphia convention was ordered he was still in doubt as to its results, and not at all confident nor inclined to commit himself by taking part in the proceedings. He had publicly declared that he was done with public life; his private business demanded his attention; besides, he had the rheumatism.

Edmund Randolph, realizing the immense importance of Washington's personal attendance at

the Philadelphia meeting, was unceasing in his efforts to remove the general's objections—to overcome his inertia.

Even Madison was not sure that Washington should identify himself with a proceeding whose results were so uncertain. He rather deprecated the urgent zeal with which Randolph insisted.

"Would it not be well," writes Madison, "for him " (Washington) "to postpone his actual attendance until some judgment can be formed of the result of the meeting? It ought not to be wished by any of his friends that he should participate in an abortive proceeding."

In this correspondence, in which it is interesting to note that Randolph refers to the States as "our associated republics," it clearly appears that Washington's attendance upon the Philadelphia convention was due, more than to any other man, to the influence and the insistence of the Governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CONSTITUTION

Two of the youngest members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 went there with readymade constitutions in their pockets. Alexander Hamilton carried one, Edmund Randolph the other.

Hamilton's plan was so frankly aristocratic and monarchical, in body and soul, that it was incontinently cast aside.

Randolph's plan was in form republican, in spirit far from democratic.

The sittings of the convention began May 25, 1787. There were fifty-five delegates. Some of these were not present during the first few weeks of the session. Ten other delegates who had been elected did not attend at all.

Benjamin Franklin, aged eighty-one, was the oldest member of the convention; the youngest was Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, aged twenty-six. Alexander Hamilton was thirty; James Madison thirty-six.

General Washington was president of the convention, and the work which quiet, studious,

learned, and industrious James Madison performed fairly entitled him to the proud name he afterward bore, "the Father of the Constitution."

Three great compromises had to be made before a new government could be established.

(1) The Connecticut compromise gave equality to all the States in the Senate, while preponderance was given to the larger States in the House.

(2) The slavery question, carrying a dispute between free States and slave States, was settled by allowing three-fifths of the slaves to be counted in the census, upon which was to be based representation in Congress.

(3) Between the agricultural and commercial States the fight on the tariff and the slave trade was intensely bitter; but it was finally arranged that Congress should control commerce, and the importation of slaves should cease in 1808.

By the 17th of September the great convention had completed its task-" the noblest work ever struck off at a given time by the mind and purpose of man," according to Mr. Gladstone.

When the secret convention threw open its doors, and published the result of its labors, the world saw a Constitution which was, in form, Randolph's, yet, in spirit, so wholly foreign to its author's intention and so akin to Hamilton's, that the New York statesman (who had quit and gone home) immediately ran to its support, while Randolph