Essays on the Constitution of the United States: Published during its Discussion by the People, 1787-1788
History
Essays on the Constitution of the United States: Published during its Discussion by the People, 1787-1788
Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; United States. Constitution
trusted with the election of representatives.(44) You held the jargon,
that notwithstanding each state had an equal number of votes in the
Senate; yet the states were unequally represented in the Senate. You
espoused the tyrannic principle, that where a State refused to comply with
a requisition of Congress for money, that an army should be marched into
its bowels, to fall indiscriminately upon the property of the innocent and
the guilty, instead of having it collected as the Constitution proposed,
by the mild and equal operation of laws. One hour you sported the opinion
that Congress, afraid of the militia resisting their measures, would
neither arm nor organize them, and the next, as if men required no time to
breathe between such contradictions, that they would harass them by long
and unnecessary marches, till they wore down their spirit and rendered
them fit subjects for despotism. You, too, contended that the powers and
authorities of the new Constitution must destroy the liberties of the
people; but that the same powers and authorities might be safely trusted
with the Old Congress. You cannot have forgotten, that by such ignorance
in politics and contradictory opinions, you exhausted the politeness of
the Convention, which at length prepared to slumber when you rose to
speak; nor can you have forgotten, you were only twice appointed a member
of a Committee, or that these appointments were made merely to avoid your
endless garrulity, and if possible, lead you to reason, by the easy road
of familiar conversation. But lest you should say that I am a record only
of the bad, I shall faithfully recognize whatever occurred to your
advantage. You originated that clause in the Constitution which enacts,
that “This Constitution and the laws of the United States Which shall be
made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made,
under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the
land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in
the Constitution or the law of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
You voted that an appeal should lay to the Supreme Judiciary of the United
States, for the correction of all errors, both in law and fact. You also
agreed to the clause that declares nine States to be sufficient to put the
government in motion.(45) These are among the greater positive virtues you
exhibited in the Convention; but it would be doing you injustice were I to
omit those of a negative nature. Since the publication of the
Constitution, every topic of vulgar declamation has been employed to
persuade the people, that it will destroy the trial by jury, and is
defective for being without a bill of rights. You, sir, had more candour
in the Convention than we can allow to those declaimers out of it; there
you never signified by any motion or expression whatever, that it stood in
need of a bill of rights, or in any wise endangered the trial by jury. In
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account