on the property of the defaulting States, or of their citizens, as, by the United States, in Congress assembled, may be deemed adequate and most eligible." They also resolved, at the same session, to invest Congress, for the term of fifteen years, with authority to prohibit the vessels of any nation, with which not commercial treaty existed, from trading in any part of the United States; and to prevent foreigners, unless belonging to a nation with which the States had formed a commercial treaty, from importing into the United States any merchandise not the produce or manufacture of the country of which they are citizens or subjects; thus sanctioning a policy which would have materially impaired the prosperity of the Commonwealth.62 When Congress determined to apply to the States for authority to levy, for the term of twenty-five years, certain specific rates of duty on certain articles, and a duty of five per cent. on all others—an application which was made as early as April, 1783, when the finances of Virginia were in great confusion, and her main dependence was upon customs-she, with that wise jealousy of Federal action, bearing directly upon the people instead of the State, declined for a time to accede to it, but ultimately was disposed to acquiesce in the measure." But there was one thing the Assembly persistently refused to grant-the entire surrender of the right to regulate commerce. To regulate the trade of a country was, in their opinion, to regulate its entire industry, and control all its capital and labor, and that was a province, they honestly believed, not only without the pale of a Federal alliance, but incompatible with it. They had accordingly resisted heretofore, with all their might, every effort to extort such a concession from them; and at the October session of 1785, when a proposition was offered to make that cession for a term of twentyfive years, and upheld by Madison and other able men, the majority of the House of Delegates, impelled by their devotion to the Union, went so far as to yield that invaluable boon for the term of thirteen years; but when a motion was made to continue the grant beyond that limit, on certain conditions, it was rejected

63

62 For these acts, consult the Journals of the House of Delegates, May session of 1784, pages 11-12; and Rives' Life and Times of Madison, I, 563-4-5. Tucker's History of the United States, I, 335.

63 Hening's Statutes at Large, XI, 350.

by a decisive vote, and on the following day, believing that they had gone too far in conceding the right for thirteen years, recon sidered their vote and laid the bill upon the table, to be called up no more." Of that majority, Henry, when he happened to have a seat in the Assembly, was always the leader, and for near a twelvemonth later than the date of the passage of the resolution convoking the meeting at Annapolis, was regarded as the Federal champion. But we have said enough to show that the majority in our councils, who were opposed to the adoption of the new Federal Constitution, had been the warm and consistent friends of a Federal alliance.

tion."

65

A recent act of that majority had roused the fears of the friends of the new institution. The general Federal Convention adjourned on the seventh of September, 1787, but before adjourning had adopted a resolution expressing "the opinion that the new Constitution should be submitted to the Convention of Delegates, chosen in each State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratificaThe following month the General Assembly of Virginia held a session, and on the twenty-fifth of October passed a series of resolutions setting forth that the Constitution "ought to be submitted to a Convention of the people for their full and free investigation and discussion"; that "every citizen being a freeholder should be eligible to a seat in the Convention"; that "it be recommended to each county to elect two delegates, and to each city, town, or corporation, entitled, or who may be entitled, by law to representation in the legislature, to elect one delegate to the said Convention"; that "the qualifications of the electors be the same with those now established by law"; that "the elec

64 Journal House of Delegates, October session of 1785, pages 66, 67. 65 Madison, writing to Washington, December 7, 1786, says: "Mr. Henry, who has been hitherto the champion of the Federal party, has become a cold advocate, and, in the event of an actual sacrifice of the Mississippi by Congress, will unquestionably go over to the other side.” Rives' Life and Times of Madison, II, 142. When we remember that the Mississippi was the western boundary of Virginia, it would be strange indeed that Mr. Henry could approve the conduct of Congress in closing that river for thirty years, and in clothing the body with new powers to carry such a scheme into effect. The cession of that river to Spain by the Northern States has its prototype only in the partition of Poland.

tion of delegates be held at the usual place for holding elections of members of the General Assembly, and be conducted by the usual officers"; that "the election shall be held in the month of March next on the first day of the court to be held for each county, city, or corporation respectively, and that the persons so chosen shall assemble at the State House in Richmond on the fourth Monday of May next," which was afterwards changed for the first Monday in June. These resolutions should seem to have been specific enough for the purpose in view. But it was found out that they omitted an appropriation to defray the expenses of the proposed Convention; and a bill was brought in for that object, and received the unanimous consent of both Houses. But this bill contained, likewise, a provision to defray the expenses of delegates to another general Federal Convention, should such a body be convened. If this provision meant anything, it meant that a new General Convention was possible; and, as the Assembly rarely looked to possibilities in its legislation, that it was probable. While the lovers of union saw in this provision a determination to secure a Federal alliance on the best terms and at every hazard, those who favored the new scheme placed upon it a different interpretation.66

66 Journal House of Delegates, October session of 1787, p. 77, and the Act in full in Hening's Statutes at Large, XII, 462. Bushrod Washington, then under thirty years of age, wrote to his uncle at the beginning of this session that he had met with in all his inquiries not one member opposed to the Federal Constitution except Mr. Henry, and that other members had heard of none either. When the provision for a new Convention mentioned in the bill was approved by the House of Delegates, his eyes were probably opened, for on the 7th of December, while the Assembly was still in session, he writes to his uncle as follows: “I am sorry to inform you that the Constitution has lost so considerably that it is doubted whether it has any longer a majority in its favor. From a vote that took place the other day, this would appear certain, though I cannot think it so decisive as its enemies consider it." Bushrod Washington to George Washington, Dec. 7, 1787, copied from the Madison Files by Mr. Rives, II, 537. It thus appears that the Constitution, which had not an enemy at the opening of the session, had before its close a good many, and that the scales were nearly turned against it. It is probable that a very considerable number of the delegates had not seen the Constitution at the beginning of the session. Only four days had elapsed since any body had seen it; and when we know that intelligence at that time took sixty days to travel a distance which may

be reached in six hours at the present day; that some of the members had to travel from three to six hundred miles on horseback to reach Richmond; that there were no mail facilities, and no newspapers save one or two small sheets in Richmond and Norfolk, which, from the uncertainty of delivery, were rarely taken in the county, the probability is that if the members had seen the Constitution, they had not read it deliberately. But when they did read it, we know that the result was a provision to defray the expenses of a Convention to revise, etc. This matter would hardly require the attention we have given it, if inferences in favor of the early popularity of the Constitution had not been drawn from the state of things at the meeting of the Assembly. For the letter of Bushrod Washington, written at the opening of the session, see Rives' Madison, II, 535.

CHAPTER II.

At ten o'clock on Monday, the second day of June, 1788, the members began to assemble in the hall of the Old Capitol. It was plain that different emotions were felt by the friends and by the opponents of the Constitution. The friends of that instrument congratulated each other on the omens which they drew from the year in which their meeting was to take place. The year '88, they said, had ever been favorable to the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race. It was in 1588, two hundred years before, when the invincible Spanish Armada, destined to subvert the liberties of Protestant England, then ruled by that virgin queen, the glory of her sex and name and race, who was the patron of Raleigh and the patron of American colonization, and from whom Virginia derived her name, was assailed by the winds of Heaven, and scattered over the face of the deep.67 It was the recurrence of the year, the month, and almost the day, when, a century before, the cause of civil liberty and Protestant Christianity won a signal victory in the acquittal of the seven bishops whose destruction had been decreed by a false and cruel king; and when the celebrated letter inviting the Prince of Orange to make a descent on England, a letter which has been recently pronounced to be as significant a landmark in British history as Magna Charter itself, had been despatched to the Hague. Of all the kings who ever sate on the English throne, William Henry, Prince of Orange was most beloved by our fathers. Their attachment was shown in every form in which public gratitude seeks to exhibit its manifestations. The House of Burgesses called a county after the king, and called a county after the king

67 See in Mr. Rush's memoranda of a residence at the Court of St. James, the opinions of modern English statesmen on the probable success of the Armada.