Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
In this review of the Confederation, I have confined myself to the
exhibition of its most material defects; passing over those
imperfections in its details by which even a great part of the power
intended to be conferred upon it has been in a great measure rendered
abortive. It must be by this time evident to all men of reflection, who
can divest themselves of the prepossessions of preconceived opinions,
that it is a system so radically vicious and unsound, as to admit not
of amendment but by an entire change in its leading features and
characters.
The organization of Congress is itself utterly improper for the
exercise of those powers which are necessary to be deposited in the
Union. A single assembly may be a proper receptacle of those slender,
or rather fettered, authorities, which have been heretofore delegated
to the federal head; but it would be inconsistent with all the
principles of good government, to intrust it with those additional
powers which, even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the
proposed Constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If
that plan should not be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union
should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men who may
indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its
dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the
project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are
now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness
of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged
efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an
energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a
single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and
thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of
government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should
create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new
Constitution either are, or affect to be, solicitous to avert.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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