M^r Madison. Much stress has been laid by some gentlemen on the want of power in the Convention to propose any other than a _federal_ plan. To what had been answered by others, he would only add, that neither of the characteristics attached to a _federal_ plan would support this objection. One characteristic, was that in a _federal_ Government, the power was exercised not on the people individually; but on the people _collectively_, on the _States_. Yet in some instances as in piracies, captures &c. the existing Confederacy, and in many instances the amendments to it proposed by M^r Patterson, must operate immediately on individuals. The other characteristic was, that a _federal_ Gov^t derived its appointments not immediately from the people, but from the States which they respectively composed. Here too were facts on the other side. In two of the States, Connect^t & Rh. Island, the delegates to Cong^s were chosen, not by the Legislatures, but by the people at large; and the plan of M^r P. intended no change in this particular. It had been alledged (by M^r Patterson), that the Confederation having been formed by unanimous consent, could be dissolved by unanimous Consent only. Does this doctrine result from the nature of compacts? does it arise from any particular stipulation in the articles of Confederation? If we consider the federal Union as analagous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose one Society, and which must in its theoretic origin at least, have been the unanimous act of the component members, it cannot be said that no dissolution of the compact can be effected without unanimous consent. A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact by a part of the Society would certainly absolve the other part from their obligations to it. If the breach of _any_ article by _any_ of the parties, does not set the others at liberty, it is because, the contrary is _implied_ in the compact itself, and particularly by that law of it, which gives an indefinite authority to the majority to bind the whole in all cases. This latter circumstance shews that we are not to consider the federal Union as analagous to the social compact of individuals: for if it were so, a Majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new Constitution for the whole, which the Gentl^n from N. Jersey would be among the last to admit. If we consider the federal Union as analagous not to the Social compacts among individual men: but to the conventions among individual States, What is the doctrine resulting from these conventions? Clearly, according to the Expositors of the law of Nations, that a breach of any one article by any one party, leaves all the other parties at liberty, to consider the whole convention as dissolved, unless they choose rather to compel the delinquent party to repair the breach. In some treaties indeed it is expressly stipulated that a violation of particular articles shall not have this consequence, and