We know not what combinations, what efforts, might have followed the separation of that convention of American statesmen, without having accomplished the work for which they had been assembled. We do know, that, if _they_ could not have succeeded in framing and agreeing upon a system of government capable of commending itself to the free choice of the people of their respective States, no other body of men in this country could have done it. We know that the Confederation was virtually at an end; that its power was exhausted, although it still held the nominal seat of authority. The Union must therefore have been dissolved into its component parts, but for the wisdom and conciliation of those who, in their original earnestness to secure a perfect theory, had thus encountered an insuperable obstacle and brought about a great hazard. I have elsewhere said that these men were capable of the highest of the moral virtues,--that their magnanimity was as great as their intellectual acuteness and strength. Let us turn to the proof on which rests their title to this distinction. FOOTNOTES: [64] Rhode Island was never represented in the Convention, and the delegation of New Hampshire had not yet attended. [65] In all these statements of the relative rank of the States, I compare the census of 1790 and that of 1850. [66] The two great exceptions of course were Hamilton and Jay. [67] See the candid and moderate letter of Messrs. Yates and Lansing to the legislature of the State, giving their reasons for not signing the Constitution. (Elliot, I. 480.) [68] In the New Jersey plan, which the New York gentlemen (Hamilton excepted) supported, although the power to levy duties and the regulation of commerce were to be added to the existing powers of the old Congress, yet as these powers were to be exerted against the States, in the last resort, by force, it would only have been necessary for a State to place itself in an attitude of resistance, by a public act, and then the grant of power might have been considered to be revoked by the very act of resisting its execution. [69] Three of the delegates of the State, James McHenry, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, and Daniel Carroll, signed the Constitution. [70] Yates's Minutes, Elliot, I. 433. [71] Dr. Johnson of Connecticut. [72] Mr. Hallam has traced the present constitution of Parliament to the sanction of a statute in the 15th of Edward II. (1322), which he says recognizes it as already standing upon a custom of some length of time. Const. History, I. 5.