The Convention thus summoned met at Philadelphia on the 14th May 1787, became competent to proceed to business on May 25th, when seven States were represented, and chose George Washington to preside.1 Delegates attended from every State but Rhode Island, and these delegates, unlike those usually sent to Congress, were the leading men of the country, influential in their several States, and now filled with a sense of the need for comprehensive reforms. The instructions they had received. limited their authority to the revision of the Articles of Confederation and the proposing to Congress and the State legislatures such improvements as were required therein.2 But with admirable boldness, boldness doubly admirable in Englishmen and lawyers, the majority ultimately resolved to disregard these restrictions, and to prepare a wholly new Constitution, to be considered and ratified neither by Congress nor by the State legislatures, but by the peoples of the several States.

This famous assembly, which consisted of fifty-five delegates, thirty-nine of whom signed the Constitution which it drafted, sat nearly five months, and expended upon its work an amount of Congress to prompt action, for it revealed the want of strength in the State governments.

Mr. Justice Miller remarks with reference to the origin of the Annapolis Convention, "It is not a little remarkable that the suggestion which finally led to the relief, without which as a nation we must soon have perished, strongly supports the philosophical maxim of modern times, that of all the agencies of civilization and progress, commerce is the most efficient. What our deranged finances, our discreditable failure to pay our debts, and the sufferings of our soldiers, could not force the several States to attempt, was brought about by a desire to be released from the evils of an unregulated and burdensome commercial intercourse."Memorial Oration at the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution, 17th Sept. 1887.

1 For some remarks on Constitutional Conventions in the United States see the note to this chapter at the end of this volume.

2 It was strongly urged when the draft Constitution came up for ratification in the State Conventions that the Philadelphia Convention had no power to do more than amend the Articles of Confederation. To these objections Mr. Wilson of Pennsylvania made answer as follows:-"The business we are told which was intrusted to the late Convention was merely to amend the present Articles of Confederation. This observation has been frequently made, and has often brought to my mind a story that is related of Mr. Pope, who it is well known was not a little deformed. It was customary for him to use this phrase, 'God mend me,' when any little accident happened. One evening a link boy was lighting him along, and coming to a gutter the boy jumped nimbly over it. Mr. Pope called to him to turn, adding 'God mend me!' The arch rogue, turning to light him, looked at him and repeated 'God mend you! He would sooner make half a dozen new ones.' This would apply to the present Confederation, for it would be easier to make another than to amend this."-Elliot's Debates, Pennsylvania Convention, vol. ii. p. 472.

labour and thought commensurate with the magnitude of the task and the splendour of the result. The debates were secret,1 and fortunately so, for criticism from without might have imperilled a work which seemed repeatedly on the point of breaking down, so great were the difficulties encountered from the divergent sentiments and interests of different parts of the country, as well as of the larger and smaller States.2 The records of the Convention were left in the hands of Washington, who in 1796 deposited them in the State Department. In 1819 they were published along with the notes of the discussions kept by James Madison (afterwards twice President), who had proved himself one of the ablest and most useful members of the body. From these official records and notes the history of the Convention has been written, and may be found in the instructive volumes of Mr. G. T. Curtis and of Mr. George Bancroft, now the patriarch of American literature.

3

It is hard to-day, even for Americans, to realize how enormous those difficulties were. The Convention had not only to create de novo, on the most slender basis of pre-existing national institutions, a national government for a widely scattered people, but they had in doing so to respect the fears and jealousies and apparently irreconcilable interests of thirteen separate commonwealths, to all of whose governments it was necessary to leave a sphere of action wide enough to satisfy a deep-rooted local sentiment, yet not so wide as to imperil national unity.4 Well might

1 The fact that the country did not complain of this secrecy is the best proof of the confidence felt in the members of the Convention.

2 Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the delegates from Pennsylvania (being then eighty-one years of age), was so much distressed at the difficulties which arose and the prospect of failure that he proposed that the Convention, as all human means of obtaining agreement seemed to be useless, should open its meetings with prayer. The suggestion, remarkable as coming from one so well known for his sceptical opinions, might have been adopted but for the fear that the outside public might thus learn how grave the position of affairs was. The original of Franklin's proposition, written in his own still clear and firm hand, with his note stating that only three or four agreed with him, is preserved in the State Department at Washington, where may be also seen the original draft of the Constitution with the signatures of the thirty-nine delegates.

3 They are printed in the work called Elliot's Debates (Philadelphia, 1861), which also contains the extremely interesting debates in some of the State Conventions which ratified the Constitution.

4 The nearest parallels to such a Federal Union as that formed in 1789 were then to be found in the Achæan and Lycian Leagues, which, however, were not mere leagues, but federated nations. Both are referred to by the authors of the Federalist (see post), but their knowledge was evidently scanty. The acuteness of James Wilson had perceived that the two famous confederations of modern

Hamilton say: "The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety."1

It was even a disputable point whether the colonists were already a nation or only the raw material out of which a nation might be formed.2 There were elements of unity, there were also elements of diversity. All spoke the same language. All, except a few descendants of Dutchmen and Swedes in New York and Delaware, some Germans in Pennsylvania, some children of French Huguenots in New England and the middle States, belonged to the same race.3 All, except some Roman Catholics in Maryland, professed the Protestant religion. All were governed by the same English Common Law, and prized it not only as the bulwark which had sheltered their forefathers from the oppression of the Stuart kings, but as the basis of their more recent claims of right against the encroachments of George III. and his colonial officers. In ideas and habits of life there was less similarity, but all were republicans, managing their affairs by elective legislatures, attached to local self-government, and animated by a common pride in their successful resistance Europe did not supply a model for America. He observed in the Pennsylvania Convention of 1788: "The Swiss cantons are connected only by alliances. The United Netherlands are indeed an assemblage of societies; but this assemblage constitutes no new one, and therefore it does not correspond with the full definition of a Confederate Republic."-Elliot's Debates, vol. ii. p. 422. The Swiss Confederation has now become a Republic at once Federal and national, coming in most respects very near to its American model.

1 Federalist, No. lxxxv. He quotes the words of David Hume (Essays; "The Rise of Arts and Sciences"): "To balance a large State or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason and reflection to effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work experience must guide their labour; time must bring it to perfection; and the feeling of inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in their first trials and experiments." Words strikingly verified in the history of the United States from 1777 downwards.

2 Mr. Wilson said in the Pennsylvania Convention of 1787: " By adopting this Constitution we shall become a nation; we are not now one. We shall form a national character: we are now too dependent on others." He proceeds with a remarkable prediction of the influence which American freedom would exert upon the Old World.-Elliot's Debates, vol. ii. p. 526.

3 The Irish, a noticeable element in North Carolina and parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Hampshire, were not Catholic Celts but Scoto-Irish Presbyterians from Ulster, who, animated by resentment at the wrongs and religious persecution they had suffered at home, had been among the foremost combatants in the Revolutionary War.

to England, which they then hated with a true family hatred, a hatred to which her contemptuous treatment of them added a sting.

On the other hand their geographical position made communication very difficult. The sea was stormy in winter, the roads were bad, it took as long to travel by land from Charleston to Boston as to cross the ocean to Europe, nor was the journey less dangerous. The wealth of some States consisted in slaves ; of others in shipping; while in others there was a population of small farmers, characteristically attached to old habits. Manufactures had hardly begun to exist. The sentiment of local independence showed itself in intense suspicion of any external authority; and most parts of the country were so thinly peopled that the inhabitants had lived practically without any government, and thought that in creating one they would be forging fetters for themselves. But while these diversities and jealousies made union difficult, two dangers were absent which have beset the framers of constitutions for other nations. There were no

reactionary conspirators to be feared, for every one prized liberty and equality. There were no questions between classes, no animosities against rank and wealth, for rank and wealth did not exist.

It was inevitable under such circumstances that the Constitution, while aiming at the establishment of a durable central power, should pay great regard to the existing centrifugal forces. It was and remains what its authors styled it, eminently an instrument of compromises; it is perhaps the most successful instance in history of what a judicious spirit of compromise may effect.1 Yet out of the points which it was for this reason obliged to leave unsettled there arose fierce controversies, which after two generations, when accumulated irritation and incurable misunderstanding had been added to the force of material interests, burst into flame in the War of Secession.

The draft Constitution was submitted, as its last article provided, to conventions of the several States (i.e. bodies speci

1 Hamilton observed of it in 1788: "The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound as well of the errors and prejudices as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?"-Federalist, No. lxxxv.

ally chosen by the people for the purpose) for ratification. It was to come into effect as soon as nine States had ratified, the effect of which would have been, in case the remaining States, or any of them, had rejected it, to leave such States standing alone in the world, since the old Confederation was of course superseded and annihilated. Fortunately all the States did eventually ratify the new Constitution, but two of the most important, Virginia and New York,1 did not do so till the middle of 1788, after nine others had already accepted it; and two, North Carolina and Rhode Island, at first refused, and only consented to enter the new Union more than a year later, when the government it had created had already come into operation.2

There was a struggle everywhere over the adoption of the Constitution, a struggle which gave birth to the two great parties that for many years divided the American people. The chief source of hostility was the belief that a strong central government endangered both the rights of the States and the liberties of the individual citizen. Freedom, it was declared, would perish, freedom rescued from George III. would perish at the hands of her own children. Consolidation (for the word centralization had not yet been invented) would extinguish the State governments and the local institutions they protected. The feeling was very bitter, and in some States, notably in Massachusetts and New York, the majorities were dangerously narrow. Had the decision been left to what is now called "the voice of the people," that is, to the mass of the citizens all over the country, voting at the polls, the voice of the people would

1 Virginia was then much the largest State (population in 1790, 747,610). New York was reckoned among the smaller States (population 340,120) but her central geographical position made her adhesion extremely important.

2 Mr. Justice Miller observes that the refusal of Rhode Island seems to have been largely due to her desire that "her superior advantages of location, and the possession of what was then supposed to be the best harbour on the Atlantic coast, should not be subjected to the control of a Congress which was by that instrument expressly authorized to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and provide that no preference should be given to the ports of any State."-Memorial Oration, ut supra.

3 In the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 Mr. Nason delivered himself of the following pathetic appeal: "And here, sir, I beg the indulgence of this honourable body to permit me to make a short apostrophe to Liberty. O Liberty, thou greatest good! thou fairest property! with thee I wish to live-with thee I wish to die! Pardon me if I drop a tear on the peril to which she is exposed. I cannot, sir, see this highest of jewels tarnished-a jewel worth ten thousand worlds; and shall we part with it so soon? Oh no."-Elliot's Debates, ii. 133.