Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
To the difficulties already mentioned may be added the interfering
pretensions of the larger and smaller States. We cannot err in
supposing that the former would contend for a participation in the
government, fully proportioned to their superior wealth and importance;
and that the latter would not be less tenacious of the equality at
present enjoyed by them. We may well suppose that neither side would
entirely yield to the other, and consequently that the struggle could
be terminated only by compromise. It is extremely probable, also, that
after the ratio of representation had been adjusted, this very
compromise must have produced a fresh struggle between the same
parties, to give such a turn to the organization of the government, and
to the distribution of its powers, as would increase the importance of
the branches, in forming which they had respectively obtained the
greatest share of influence. There are features in the Constitution
which warrant each of these suppositions; and as far as either of them
is well founded, it shows that the convention must have been compelled
to sacrifice theoretical propriety to the force of extraneous
considerations.
Nor could it have been the large and small States only, which would
marshal themselves in opposition to each other on various points. Other
combinations, resulting from a difference of local position and policy,
must have created additional difficulties. As every State may be
divided into different districts, and its citizens into different
classes, which give birth to contending interests and local jealousies,
so the different parts of the United States are distinguished from each
other by a variety of circumstances, which produce a like effect on a
larger scale. And although this variety of interests, for reasons
sufficiently explained in a former paper, may have a salutary influence
on the administration of the government when formed, yet every one must
be sensible of the contrary influence, which must have been experienced
in the task of forming it.
Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties,
the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that
artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the
subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution
planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so
many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a
unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It
is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance
without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of
pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand
which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the
critical stages of the revolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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