doubtedly a settled conviction on the part of the two delegates of New York who controlled the vote of the State in the Convention, that they had not received the necessary authority from their own State to go beyond the principle of the Confederation; that it would be impracticable to establish a general government, without impairing the State constitutions and endangering the liberties of the people; and that what they regarded as a "consolidated" government was not in the remotest degree within the contemplation of the legislature of New York when they were sent to take their seats in the Convention. The same sentiments, with far greater zeal, with intense feeling and some acrimony, were held and acted upon by Luther Martin of Maryland, a very eminent lawyer, and at that time Attorney-General of the State, who sometimes had it in his power, from the absence of his colleagues, to cast the vote of his State with the minority, and who generally divided it on all critical questions that touched the nature of the government. The State itself, with a population but a little less than that of New York, had no great reason to regard itself as peculiarly exposed to the dangers to be apprehended from combinations among the larger States to oppress the smaller; and it does not appear that these apprehensions were strongly felt by any of her representatives excepting Mr. Martin.1 The great energy and earnestness, 1 Three of the delegates of the State, James McHenry, Daniel of VOL. II. 16 St. Thomas Jenifer, and Daniel however, of that distinguished person, prevented a concurrence of the State with the purposes and objects of the majority. Connecticut might reasonably consider herself as one of the smaller States, and her vote was steadily given for an equality of suffrage in both branches of the national legislature, down to the time of the final division upon the Senate. The States of New Jersey and Delaware formed the other members of the minority, upon this general ques tion. On the one side, therefore, of what would have been, but for the great inequalities among the States, almost a purely speculative question, we find a strong determination, the result of an apparent necessity, to establish a government in which the democratic majority of the whole people of the United States should be the ruling power; and in which, so far as State influence was to be felt at all, it should be felt only in proportion to the relative numbers of the people composing each separate community. It was considered by those who embraced this side of the question, that, when the great States were asked to perpetuate the system of federal equality on which the Confederation had been founded, they were asked to submit to mere injustice, on account of an imaginary danger to their smaller confederates. They held it to be manifestly wrong, that a State fourteen times as large as Delaware should have only the same number of votes in the national legislature. Whether the States were now met as parties to a subsisting confederacy, under which they might be regarded in the same light as the individuals composing the social compact; or whether they were to be looked upon as so many aggregates of individuals for whose personal rights and interests provision was to be made, as if they composed a nation already united, it was believed by the majority that no safe and durable government could be formed, if the democratic element were to be excluded. Pure democracies had undoubtedly been attended with inconveniences. But how could peace and real freedom be preserved, under the republican form, if half a million of people dwelling in one political division of the country possessed only the same suffrage in the enactment of laws as sixty thousand people dwelling in another division? Leave out of view the theory which taught that the States alone, regarded as members of an existing compact, must be considered as the parties to the new system, as they had been to the old, and it would be found that the political equality of the free citizens of the United States could be made a source of that energy and strength so much needed and as yet so little known. With it was connected the idea and the practicability of legislation that would reach and control individuals. Without it, there could be only a system of coercion of the States, whose opposition would be invited, rather than repressed, upon all occasions of importance. Abandon the necessary principle of governing by a democratic majority, said George Mason, and if the government proceeds to taxation, the States will oppose its powers.' On the other hand, the minority, insisting on a rigid construction of their powers, and planting themselves upon the nature of the compact already formed between the States, contended that these separate and sovereign communities had distinct governments already vested with the whole political power of their respective populations, and therefore that they could not, consistently with the truth of their situation, act as if the whole or any considerable part of that power could be transferred by the people themselves to another government. They said, that whatever power was to be conferred on a central or general government must be granted by the States, as political corporations, and that therefore the principle of the Union could not be changed, whatever addition it might be expedient to make to its authority. They said, that, even if this theory were not strictly true, the smaller States could not safely unite with the larger upon any other; and especially that they could not surrender their liberties to the keeping of a majority of the people inhabiting all the States, for such a power would inevitably destroy the State constitutions. They were willing, they said, to enlarge the powers of the federal government; willing to provide for it the means of compelling obedience to its laws; willing to hazard much for the general welfare. But they could not consent to place the very existence of their local 1 Yates's Minutes, Elliot, I. 433. governments, with all their capacity to protect the distinct interests of the people, and all their peculiar fitness for the administration of local concerns, at the mercy of great communities, whose policy might overshadow and whose power might destroy them. To the claim of political equality as between a citizen of the largest and a citizen of the smallest State in the Union, they opposed the doctrine, that in his own State every citizen is equal with every other, and holds such rights and liberties, and so much political power, as the State may see fit to bestow upon him; but that, when separate States enter into political relations with each other for their common benefit, it is among the States themselves that the equality must prevail, because States can only be parties to a compact upon a footing of natural equality, just as individuals are supposed to enter society with equal natural rights. This doctrine, they said, was especially necessary to be applied between States of very unequal magnitudes. If applied, it would render unnecessary the division of the legislative body into two chambers; would dispense with any but a supreme judicial tribunal; and would admit of a ratification by the States in Congress, without raising the hazardous and doubtful question of a direct resort to the people, whose power to act independently of their State governments was by some strenuously denied. These, in substance, were the principles now brought into direct collision, urged under a great variety of forms, and recurring upon the successive |