with from men of different prejudices or interests. To find the truth, not to carry a point, has been my object.

I have not the vanity to imagine that my sentiments may be adopted; I shall have all the re

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ward I wish or expect, if my dissertation shall throw any light on the great subject, shall excite an emulation of inquiry, and animate some abler genius to form a plan of greater perfection, less objectionable, and more useful.

NOTE 1.

IN

And as it had stood the test of discussion in Congress for two years, before they completed and adopted it, and in all the States for three years more, before it was finally ratified, one would have thought that it must have been a very finished and perfect plan of government.

But on trial of it in practice, it was found to be extremely weak, defective, totally inefficient, and altogether inadequate to its great ends and purposes. For,

1. It blended the legislative and executive powers together in one body.

2. This body, viz., Congress, consisted of but one house, without any check upon their resolutions.

3. The powers of Congress in very few instances were definitive and final; in the most important articles of government they could do no more than recommend to the several States; the consent of every one of which was necessary to give legal sanction to any act so recommended. 4. They could assess and levy no taxes. 5. They could institute and execute no punishments, except in the military department.

6. They had no power of deciding or controlling the contentions and disputes of different States with each other.

7. They could not regulate the general trade: or, 8. Even make laws to secure either public treaties with foreign States, or the persons of public ambassadors, or to punish violations or injuries done to either of them.

9. They could institute no general judiciary powers.

10. They could regulate no public roads, canals, or inland navigation, etc., etc., etc.

And what caps all the rest was, that (whilst under such an inefficient political constitution, the only chance we had of any tolerable administration lay wholly in the prudence and wisdom of the men who happened to take the lead in our public councils) it was fatally provided by the absurd doctrine of rotation, that if any Member of Congress by three years' experience and application, had qualified himself to manage our public affairs with consistency and fitness, that he should be constitutionally and absolutely rendered incapable of serving any longer, till by three years' discontinuance, he had pretty well lost the cue or train of the public counsels, and forgot the ideas and plans which made his service useful and important; and, in the mean time, his place should be supplied by a fresh man, who had the whole matter to learn, and when he had learned it, was to give place to another fresh man; and so on to the end of the chapter.

The sensible mind of the United States, by long experience of the fatal mischiefs of anarchy, or (which is about the same thing) of this ridic ulous, inefficient form of government, began to apprehend that there was something wrong in our policy, which ought to be redressed and mended; but nobody undertook to delineate the necessary amendments.

I was then pretty much at leisure, and was fully of opinion (though the sentiment at that time would not very well bear) that it would be ten times easier to form a new constitution than to mend the old one. I therefore sat myself down to sketch out the leading principles of that political constitution, which I thought necessary to the preservation and happiness of the United States of America, which are comprised in this Dissertation.

I hope the reader will please to consider, that these are the original thoughts of a private individual dictated by the nature of the subject only, long before the important theme became the great object of discussion, in the most digni

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fied and important assembly, which ever sat or decided in America.

NOTE 2.

At the time when this Dissertation was written (Feb. 16, 1783) the defects and insufficiency of the Old Federal Constitution were universally felt and acknowledged; was manifest, not only that the internal police, justice, security and peace of the States could never be preserved under it, but the finances and public credit would necessarily become so embarrassed, precarious, and void of support, that no public movement, which depended on the revenue, could be managed with any effectual certainty: but though the public mind was under full conviction of all these mischiefs, and was contemplating a remedy, yet the public ideas were not at all concentrated, much less arranged into any new system or form of government, which would obviate these evils. Under these circumstances I offered this Dissertation to the public: how far the principles of it were adopted or rejected in the New Constitution, which was four years afterwards (Sept. 17, 1787) formed by the General Convention, and since ratified by all the States, is obvious to every one. I wish here to remark the great particulars of my plan which were rejected by the Convention.

1. My plan was to keep the legislative and executive departments entirely distinct; the one to consist of the two houses of Congress, the other to rest entirely in the Grand Council of State.

2. I proposed to introduce a Chamber of Commerce, to consist of merchants, who should be consulted by the legislature in all matters of trade and revenue, and which should have the conducting of the revenue committed to them.

The first of these the Convention qualified; the second they say nothing of, i. e., take no notice of it.

3. I proposed that the great officers of state should have the perusal of all bills, before they were enacted into laws, and should be required to give their opinion of them, as far as they affected the public interest in their several departments; which report of them Congress should cause to be read in their respective houses, and entered on their minutes. This is passed over without notice.

4. I proposed that all public officers appointed by the executive authority, should be amenable both to them and to the legislative power, and removable for just cause by either of them. This is qualified by the Convention.

And in as much as my sentiments in these respects were either qualified or totally neglected by the Convention, I suppose they were wrong; how ever, the whole matter is submitted to the poli ticians of the present age, and to our posterity in future.

In sundry other things, the Convention have gone into minutiæ, e. g., respecting elections of President, Senators, and Representatives in Congress, etc., which I proposed to leave at large to the wisdom and discretion of Congress, and of the several States.

Great reasons may doubtless be assigned for their decision, and perhaps some little ones for mine. Time, the great arbiter of all human plans, may, after a while, give his decision; but neither the Convention nor myself will probably live to feel either the exultation or mortification of his approbation or disapprobation of either of our plans.

But if any of these questions should in future time become objects of discussion, neither the vast dignity of the Convention, nor the low, unnoticed state of myself, will be at all considered in the debates; the merits of the matter, and the interests connected with or arising out of it, will alone dictate the decision.

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Opening of the Convention

When Monday, May 14, 1787, arrived, but few of the delegates had assembled at Philadelphia, those from Virginia and Pennsylvania being the only ones present, and it was not until the 25th of the month that a quorum of seven States was present. On that day the members. of the Convention assembled at the State-house and organized for business. Washington was placed in the chair as president+ and Major William Jackson was appointed secretary. The credentials of the delegates were examined and a mittee appointed to prepare rules, the convention then adjourning until the 28th. The delegates from Massachusetts and Connecticut in the meantime arrived at Philadelphia. New Hampshire had also appointed hers, but as her treasury was empty

com

*For a list of the members of the Convention, see Appendix i. at the end of the present chapter. Sparks, Life of Washington, p. 402; Elliot, Debates, vol. v., p. 123.

Schouler, United States, vol. i., p. 39; Madison's Works (Congress ed.), vol. i., p. 329.

and as no funds could be raised, her delegates did not put in an appearance for some weeks;* and it was not until the latter part of July that all the States except Rhode Island were represented in the Convention. Consequently, when the Convention reassembled on May 28 only nine States were present. The doors were then closed and a pledge of secrecy was exacted from each member, and it was not until Madison's Journal of the debates of the convention was published by order of Congress in 1818 that the proceedings of the Convention were fully known.‡

Of the members of the Convention (or the "Assembly of demigods" as

* Madison's Works (Congress ed.), vol. i., p. 331.

Curtis, Constitutional History, vol. i., p. 328; Bancroft, vol. vi., pp. 208-212. On the actions of Rhode Island, see Bates, Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union, p. 153 et seq.

McMaster, United States, vol. i., p. 418. See also Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, chap. xii.; Hildreth, History of the United States, vol. iii., pp. 482-526; Bancroft, vol. vi., pp. 207-367.