dleton were well known to be in favor of the Constitution; and the election of president presented a fair opportunity of testing the relative strength of parties. In the selection of their candidate, the Federalists had chosen a name which, in the pure and benevolent character of him who bore it, in his long and valuable service in the public councils, and in his venerable age, was known and honored throughout the Commonwealth, and which, with the exception of that of one who had long been his compeer in the House of Burgesses, at the bar of the General Court, in the Conventions of 1775 and 1776, in the Congress, and on the bench, may be said then to have stood almost alone in the civil service of his country.' 76 But George Wythe was now known to approve the Constitution, and so far from opposing Pendleton would sustain him by his vote. Had Wythe been of the opposite party, the opponents of the Constitution would doubtless have ventured a contest. Nor is it certain that the contest would not have been successful. Wythe was, as a man, more popular than Pendleton; many of the members had been his scholars, and loved him with an affection which neither time nor distrust could weaken; and he would certainly have carried with him the votes of the smaller counties on tide, which had ever regarded him with warm attachment, and had long counted his fame among their most precious possessions. The contest, too, might have been waged without wounding the delicacy of Pendleton, who was unable to perform the duties of the presiding officer unless allowed to sit in the chair; and opposition may have taken the hue of respect for his physical infirmities. But no name was brought forward by the opponents of the Constitution, and Pendleton was elected without a division.

Twelve years which had elapsed since the adjournment of the Convention of 1776 had left their mark upon the President. He was in his sixty-seventh year, and his intellectual powers, quickened by the discussions in the court in which he had presided since its organization, were undiminished; but there was a sad

76 President Pendleton, who was also president of the Court of Appeals, was now in his sixty-seventh year, but, from the breaking of a thigh-bone ten or eleven years before, which prevented him from taking exercise or moving without a crutch, looked much older than he was.

change in his outward form. Some individuals present remembered him as he was in the House of Burgesses more than a quarter of a century past; one member had seen him in the public councils more than the third of a century ago; and not a few of the members could recall him as with a buoyant and graceful step he walked from the floor of the Convention of December, 1775, and of May, 1776, to the chair, escorted in the former body by Paul Carrington and James Mercer, and in the latter by the venerable Richard Bland and the inflexible Archibald Cary. It was a touching sight to behold him, his earlier and elder compeers long laid to rest, as, with his shrunken form upheld by crutches, he now passed between Carrington and Wythe to the chair. He made an acknowledgment of the honor conferred upon him in a few plain words not otherwise remarkable than as being the first ever addressed to a deliberate Assembly of Virginia from a sitting position."

The Rev. Abner Waugh was, on motion of Paul Carrington, unanimously elected chaplain, and "was ordered to attend every morning to read prayers, immediately after the bell should be rung for calling the Convention. 78

When the Convention had elected the other officers of the body," had appointed a Committee of Privileges and Elections,

80

77 There was no formal resolution but rather a general understanding that Pendleton was to sit in addressing or putting a question to the house. It is probable that Carrington, who was his associate on the bench of the Court of Appeals, and who knew his physical infirmities, may have alluded to the subject in his nominating speech. Robertson, in his Debates, thus alludes to the election of Pendleton: "He was unanimously elected president, who being seated in the chair, thanked the Convention for the honor conferred upon him, and strongly recommended to the members to use the utmost moderation and temper in their deliberations on the great and important subject now before them." Pendleton, in the sketch of his own life, mentions gratefully that he was allowed to sit while performing the duties of the chair.

78 The Rev. Abner Waugh, as early as 1774, had been the rector of Saint Mary in the county of Caroline, and survived to the year 1806, when he was chosen rector of St. George's parish, Fredericksburg, but finding his health insufficient for the performance of his duty, he soon resigned and died a short time after at "Hazlewood." His valedictory to his parishioners breathes the devotion of a Christian.

79 The other officers were William Drinkard, Sr., and William Drink

and had chosen a printer of its proceedings, it adjourned, on the motion of George Mason to the next day at eleven, then to meet in the New Academy on Shockoe Hill.

On the morning of the next day it met in the New Academy, a large wooden structure reared by the Chevalier Quesnay, a captain in the army of the Revolution, for the promotion of the arts and literature of the rising Commonwealth. Its cornerstone had been laid two years before with great ceremony in presence of the State and town authorities; and the scheme of the institution had received the sanction of the French Academy of Sciences in a formal report endorsed by the famous Levoisier a short time before he was led to the guillotine, and which was designed to be the fountain from which the arts and sciences in the New World would soon begin to flow, but which, like most of the schemes of foreign proprietors in a new country, was destined to a speedy dissolution. The commodious hall of this building was well adapted to the purposes of the Convention, and was now filled to overflowing. 1

ard, Jr., doorkeepers; Edmund Pendleton, Jr., clerk of the Committee of Elections; Augustine Davis, printer; and on the following day William Pierce was elected sergeant-at-arms, and Daniel Hicks, one of the doorkeepers. Augustine Davis was the editor and proprietor of the Virginia Gazette, and somewhat later postmaster of Richmond. His printing office was in the basement of a house at the corner of Main and Eleventh streets, which was subsequently the office of the Whig, founded by John Hampden Pleasants, (who first used a press purchased from Davis) and successively of the Enquirer, influential organs in the past respectively of the Whig and Democratic parties.-ED.

80 The Committee of Privileges and Elections were so distinguished a body that I annex their names, with the remark that such an array of genius, talents, and public and private worth had not been seen before, nor has it been seen since, on such a committee in Virginia : Benjamin Harrison, George Mason, His Excellency Governor Randolph, Patrick Henry, George Nicholas, John Marshall, Paul Carrington, John Tyler, Alexander White, John Blair, Theodore Bland, William Grayson, Daniel Fisher, Thomas Mathews, John Jones, George Wythe, William Cabell, James Taylor of Caroline, Gabriel Jones, Francis Corbin, James Innes, James Monroe, Henry Lee, and Cuthbert Bullitt. The committee is appointed with great liberality, the friends of the Constitution having a majority of two only.

81 The Academy grounds included the square bounded by Broad and Marshall and Eleventh and Twelfth streets, on the lower portion of

After the transaction of some ordinary business, Benjamin Harrison moved that all the papers relative to the Constitution

which stood the Monumental Church and the Medical College. The Academy stood midway in the square fronting Broad street. "L'Acad emie Des Etats-Unis De L'Amerique" was an attempt, growing out of the French alliance with the United States, to plant in Richmond a kind of French Academy of the arts and sciences, with branch acad emies in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The institution was to be at once national and international. It was to be affiliated with the royal societies of London, Paris, Bruxelles, and other learned bodies in Europe. It was to be composed of a president, vice-president, six counsellors, a treasurer-general, a secretary and a recorder, an agent for taking European subscriptions, French professors, masters, artistsin-chief attached to the Academy, twenty-five resident and one hundred and seventy-five non-resident associates, selected from the best talent of the Old World and of the New. The Academy proposed to publish yearly from its own press in Paris, an almanac. The Academy was to show its zeal for science by communicating to France and other European countries a knowledge of the natural products of North America. The museums and cabinets of the Old World were to be enriched by specimens of the flora and fauna of a country as yet undiscovered by men of science. The proprietor of the brilliant scheme was the Chevalier Alexander Maria Quesnay de Beaurepaire, grandson of the famous French philosopher and economist, Dr. Quesnay, who was the court physician of Louis XV. Chevalier Quesnay had served as a captain in Virginia in 1777–78 in the war of the Revolution. The idea of founding the Academy was suggested to him in 1778 by John Page, of "Rosewell," then Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, and himself devoted to scientific investigation. Quesnay succeeded in raising by subscription the sum of 60,000 francs, the subscribers in Virginia embracing nearly one hundred prominent names. The cornerstone of the building, which was of wood, was laid with Masonic ceremonies July 8th, 1786. Having founded and organized his Academy under the most distinguished auspices, Quesnay returned to Paris and succeeded in enlisting in support of his plan many learned and distinguished men of France and England. The French Revolution, however, put an end to the scheme. The Academy building was early converted into a theatre, which was destroyed by fire, but a new theatre was erected in the rear of the old. This new building was also destroyed by fire on the night of December 26th, 1811, when seventy-two persons perished in the flames. The Monumental church commemorates the disaster, and its portico covers the tomb and ashes of most of its victims. A valuable sketch of Quesnay's enlightened projection, chiefly drawn from his curious "Mémoire concirnant l'Academie des Sciences et Beaux Arts des États-Unis d'Amerique, Établic & Rich

should be read. John Tyler observed that before any papers were read, certain rules and regulations should be established to govern the Convention in its deliberations. Edmund Randolph fully concurred in the propriety of establishing rules; but, as this was a subject which would invoke the Convention in debate, he recommended that the rules of the House of Delegates, as far as they were applicable, should be observed. Tyler had no objection to the mode suggested by Randolph ; accordingly, the rules of the House of Delegates, as far as they were applicable, were adopted by the present, as they had been by all subsequent Conventions.

82

On motion, "the resolutions of Congress of the twenty-eighth of September previous, together with the report of the Federal Convention, lately held in Philadelphia, the resolutions of the General Assembly of the twenty-fifth of October last, and the Act of the General Assembly, entitled an Act concerning the Convention to be held in June next," were now read, when George Mason arose to address the House. In an instant the insensible hum of the body was hushed, and the eyes of all were fixed upon him. How he appeared that day as he rose in that large assemblage, his once raven hair white as snow, his stalwart figure, attired in deep mourning, still erect, his black eyes fairly flashing forth the flame that burned in his bosom, the tones of his voice deliberate and full as when, in the first House of Delegates, he sought to sweep from the statute book those obliquities which marred the beauty of the young republic, or uttered that withering sarcasm which tinges his portrait by the hand of Jefferson, we have heard from the lips, and seen reflected from the moistened eyes of trembling age. His reputation as the author of the Declaration of Rights and of the first Constitution of a free Commonwealth; as the responsible director of some of the

mond," was published in The Academy, December, 1887, Vol. II, No. 9, pp. 403, 412, by Dr. Herbert B. Adams, of Johns-Hopkins University. A copy of Quesnay's rare " Mémoire" is in the library of the State of Virginia. Quesnay complains bitterly that all his letters relating to his service in the American army had been stolen from a pigeon-hole in Governor Henry's desk, and his promotion thus prevented.

82 This resolution was merely formal, ordering the Constitution to be transmitted to the legislatures of the States. It may be seen in Fobrell's edition of the Journals of the old Congress, IX, 110.