government proceeds to taxation, the States will oppose its powers.1

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

details of the Constitution, as its formation proceeded, and pressed with equal earnestness and equally firm convictions of duty on both sides. I confess that it does not seem to me important, if it be practicable, to decide which party was theoretically correct. A great deal of the reasoning on both sides was speculative, and it is not easy to deny some of the chief propositions which were maintained on the one side and the other. We are too apt, perhaps, to judge of the real soundness of the opinions held by opposite parties to the first compromise of the Constitution, by the subsequent history and success of the government, and by the views and feelings which we entertain of that history and that success. Whereas, in truth, if we place ourselves at the point where the framers of the Constitution stood at the time we are examining, we shall find that, with the exception of the influence due to one or two governing facts of previous history, it was theoretically as correct to contend for a purely federal as for a purely national government. Almost everything depends upon the object towards which they were to reason; and therefore the premises were in a considerable degree open to an arbitrary choice. If the object was to establish a government, against the exercise of whose legitimate powers State legislation could not possibly be exerted, some higher authority than that of the State governments must be resorted to; and the reasoning which tended to prove the existence of that authority and the practicability of invoking it, and the danger of any other kind of government,

comes logically and consistently in support of the great purpose to be attained. If, however, from an honest fear for the safety of local interests, the purpose was to have a government that would not seriously diminish the powers of the States, but would leave them with always unimpaired sovereignties, capable of resisting the measures of the central power, then the States were certainly competent and sufficient to the formation of such a system, and the reasoning which placed them in the light of parties to a social compact was theoretically true. On the one side, it was believed that a government formed by the States upon the principle of federal equality would be destructive of the powers of the general government, whatever those powers might be. On the other side, it was considered that the principle of governing by a democratic majority of the people of all the States would make those powers too formidable for the safety of the State constitutions. According to the force we may assign to the one or the other tendency, the reasoning on either side will appear to us to be almost equally correct.

But there were, as I have said, one or two facts of previous history, which gave the advocates of a national government a great advantage over their opponents, and went far towards settling the real merits of the two opposite systems. A federal system had been tried, and had broken down in complete prostration of all the appropriate energies and functions of government. The advocates of the opposite system, therefore, could point to all the fail

ures and all the defects of the Confederation, in proof of the reasoning which they employed. In addition to this, they could adduce the same general tendency in all former confederacies of the same nature. But no experiment had been made by the people of the American States, of a government founded expressly on the national character and relations of their inhabitants; and if the merits of such a government were now only to be maintained by theoretical reasoning, on the other hand it had not suffered the injury of acknowledged defeat.

The difficulty in the way of its adoption was its supposed tendency to absorb, and perhaps to annihilate, the sovereignties of the States. The advocates of the Virginia plan were called upon to show how the general sovereignty and jurisdiction which they proposed to give to their system could consist with a considerable, though subordinate, jurisdiction in the States. One of its moderate and candid opponents1 declared that, if this could be shown, the objections to it ought to be surrendered; but if not, he thought that those objections must have their full force. But, from the very nature of the case, that which had not been demonstrated by experience could rest only upon opinion; and while the Virginia system made no other provision for State defence against encroachments of the general government than such as might be found in the election by the State legislatures of the national Senate, the apprehensions of the smaller States could not be

1 Dr. Johnson of Connecticut.