dent and Vice-President of the United States, shall have been ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, the secretary of state shall forthwith cause a notification thereof to be made to the executive of every state, and shall also cause the same to be published in at least one of the newspapers printed in each state, in which the laws of the United States are annually published. The executive authority of each state shall cause a transcript of the said notification to be delivered to the elect ors appointed for that purpose, who shall first thereafter meet in such state, for the election of a President and Vice-President of the United States; and whenever the said electors shall have received the said transcript of notification, or whenever they shall meet more than five days subsequent to the publication of the above-mentioned amendment, in one of the newspapers of the state, by the secretary of state, they shall vote for President and Vice-President of the United States, respectively, in the manner directed by the above-mentioned amendment; and, having made and signed three certificates of all the votes given by them, each of which certificates shall contain two distinct lists, one, of the votes given for President, and the other, of the votes given for Vice-President, they shall seal up the said certificates, certifying on each that lists of all the votes of such state given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice-President, are contained therein, and shall cause the said certificates to be transmitted and disposed of, and in every other respect act in conformity with the provisions of the act to which this is a supplement. And every other provision of the act to which this is a supplement, and which is not virtually repealed by this act, shall extend and apply to every election of a President and Vice-President of the United States, made in conformity to the above-mentioned amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

And on the 25th of September, 1804, the following notice, in pursuance of the above provision, was issued from the state department:

"By James Madison, Secretary of State of the United States.

"Public notice is hereby given, in pursuance of the act of Congress passed on the 26th March last, entitled An Act supplementary to the Act entitled An Act relative to the Election of a President and VicePresident of the United States, and declaring the Officer who shall act as President, in Case of Vacancies in the Offices both of President and VicePresident,'That the amendment proposed, during the last session of Congress, to the Constitution of the United States, respecting the manner of voting for President and Vice-President of the United States, has been ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, to wit, by those of Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and has thereby become valid as part of the Constitution of the United States.

"Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, this twenty-fifth day of September, 1804. (Signed) JAMES MADISON."

LUTHER MARTIN'S LETTER

ON THE

FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787.

THE GENUINE INFORMATION, DELIVERED TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MARYLAND, RELATIVE TO THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, IN 1787, BY LUTHER MARTIN, ESQ., ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF MARYLAND, AND ONE OF THE DELEGATES IN THE SAID CONVENTION.

To the Hon. THOMAS COCKEY DEYE, Speaker of the House of Delegates of Maryland.

SIR, I flatter myself the subject of this letter will be a sufficient apology for thus publicly addressing it to you, and, through you, to the other members of the House of Delegates. It cannot have escaped your or their recollection, that, when called upon, as the servant of a free state, to render an account of those transactions in which I had a share, in consequence of the trust reposed in me by that state, among other things, I informed them, "that, some time in July, the Hon. Mr. Yates and Mr. Lansing, of New York, left the Convention; that they had uniformly opposed the system, and that, I believe, despairing of getting a proper one brought forward, or of rendering any real service, they returned no more." You cannot, sir, have forgotten for the incident was too remarkable not to have made some impression that, upon my giving this information, the zeal of one of my honorable colleagues, in favor of a system which I thought it my duty to oppose, impelled him to interrupt me, and, in a manner which I am confident his zeal alone prevented him from being convinced was not the most delicate, to insinuate, pretty strongly, that the statement which I had given of the conduct of those gentlemen, and their motives for not returning, was not candid.

Those honorable members have officially given information on this subject, by a joint letter to his excellency, Governor Clinton. [See elsewhere in this volume.] Indulge me, sir, in giving an extract from it, that it may stand contrasted in the same page with the information I gave, and may convict me of the want of candor of which I was charged, if the charge was just if it will not do that, then let it silence my accusers. —

"Thus circumstanced, under these impressions, to have hesitated would have been to be culpable. We therefore gave the principles of the Constitution, which has received the sanction of a majority of the Convention, our decided and unreserved dissent. We were not present at the completion of the new Constitution; but, before we left the Convention, its principles were so well established as to convince us that no alteration was to be expected to conform it to our ideas of expediency and safety. A persuasion that our further attendance would be fruitless and unavailing, rendered us less solicitous to return."

These, sir, are their words. On this I shall make no comment. I wish not to wound the feelings of any person. I only wish to convince. I have the honor to remain, with the utmost respect,

Your very obedient servant,

BALTIMORE, January 27, 1788.

LUTHER MARTIN.

[Mr. MARTIN, when called upon, addressed the house nearly as follows: -]

Since I was notified of the resolve of this honorable house, that we should attend this day, to give information with regard to the proceedings of the late Convention, my time has necessarily been taken up with business, and I have also been obliged to make a journey to the Eastern Shore. These circumstances have prevented me from being as well prepared as I could wish to give the information required. However, the few leisure moments I could spare, I have devoted to refreshing my memory, by looking over the papers and notes in my possession; and shall, with pleasure, to the best of my abilities, render an account of my conduct.

I

It was not in my power to attend the Convention immediately on my appointment. I took my seat, I believe, about the 8th or 9th of June. found that Governor Randolph, of Virginia, had laid before the Convention certain propositions for their consideration, which have been read to this house by my honorable colleague; and I believe he has very faithfully detailed the substance of the speech with which the business of the Convention was opened; for, though I was not there at the time, I saw notes which had been taken of it.

The members of the Convention from the states came there under dif ferent powers; the greatest number, I believe, under powers nearly the same as those of the delegates of this state. Some came to the Convention under the former appointment, authorizing the meeting of delegates. merely to regulate trade. Those of Delaware were expressly instructed to agree to no system which should take away from the states that equality of suffrage secured by the original Articles of Confederation. Before I arrived, a number of rules had been adopted to regulate the proceedings of the Convention, by one of which, seven states might proceed to business, and consequently four states, the majority of that number, might eventually have agreed upon a system which was to affect the whole Union. By another, the doors were to be shut, and the whole proceedings were to be kept secret; and so far did this rule extend, that we were thereby prevented from corresponding with gentlemen in the different. states upon the subjects under our discussion a circumstance, sir, which I confess I greatly regretted. I had no idea that all the wisdom, ntegrity, and virtue of this state, or of the others, were centred in the Convention. I wished to have corresponded freely and confidentially with eminent political characters in my own and other states not implicitly to be dictated to by them, but to give their sentiments due weight and consideration. So extremely solicitous were they that their proceedings should not transpire, that the members were prohibited even from taking copies of resolutions, on which the Convention were deliberating, or extracts of any kind from the Journals, without formally moving for, and obtaining permission, by a vote of the Convention for that purpose.

You have heard sir, the resolutions which were brought forward by the 44

VOL. I.

honorable member from Virginia. Let me call the attention of this house to the conduct of Virginia when our Confederation was entered into. That state then proposed, and obstinately contended, contrary to the sense of, and unsupported by, the other states, for an inequality of suffrage, founded on numbers, or some such scale, which should give her, and certain other states, influence in the Union over the rest. Pursuant to that spirit which then characterized her, and uniform in her conduct, the very second resolve is calculated expressly for that purpose to give her a representation proportioned to her numbers, as if the want of that was the principal defect in our original system, and this alteration the great means of remedying the evils we had experienced under our present gov

ernment.

The object of Virginia and other large states, to increase their power and influence over the others, did not escape observation. The subject, however, was discussed with great coolness in the committee of the whole house, (for the Convention had resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to deliberate upon the propositions delivered in by the honorable member from Virginia.) Hopes were formed that the farther we proceeded in the examination of the resolutions, the better the house might be satisfied of the impropriety of adopting them, and that they would finally be rejected by a majority of the committee. If, on the contrary, a majority should report in their favor, it was considered that it would not preclude the members from bringing forward and submitting any other system to the consideration of the Convention; and accordingly, while those resolves were the subject of discussion in the committee of the whole house, a number of the members who disapproved them were preparing another system, such as they thought more conducive to the happiness and welfare of the states. The propositions originally submitted to the Convention having been debated, and undergone a variety of alterations in the course of our proceedings, the committee of the whole house, by a small majority, agreed to a report, which I am happy, sir, to have in my power to lay before you. It was as follows:

"1. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee, that à national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legislative, judiciary, and executive.

"2. That the legislative ought to consist of two branches.

"3. That the members of the first branch of the national legislature ought to be elected by the people of the several states, for the term of three years; to receive fixed stipends, by which they may be compensated for the devotion of their time to public service, to be paid out of the national treasury; to be ineligible to any office established by a particular state, or under the authority of the United States, except those particularly belonging to the functions of the first branch, during the term of service, and under the national government, for the space of one year after its expiration.

"4. That the members of the second branch of the legislature ought to be chosen by the individual legislatures; to be of the age of thirty years at least to hold their offices for a term sufficient to insure their independency, namely, seven years, one third to go out biennially, to receive fixed stipends, by which they may be compensated for the devotion of their time to public service, to be paid out of the national treasury; to be ineligible to any office by a particular state, or under the authority of the United States, except those peculiarly belonging to the functions of

the second branch, during the term of service, and under the national government, for the space of one year after its expiratiɔn.

"5. That each branch ought to possess the right of originating acts. "6. That the national legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in Congress by the Confederation, and moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent. or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation; to negative all laws passed by the sen eral states, contravening, in the opinion of the legislature of the Unitea States, the articles of union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the Union.

7. That the right of suffrage, in the first branch of the national legislature, ought not to be according to the rule established in the Ar ticles of Confederation, but according to some equitable rate of representation; namely, in proportion to the whole number of white, and other free citizens and inhabitants, of every age, sex, and condition, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and three fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes, in each state.

"8. That the right of suffrage in the second branch of the national legislature ought to be according to the rule established in the first.

9. That a national executive be instituted, to consist of a single person, to be chosen by the national legislature for the term of seven years, with power to carry into execution the national laws; to appoint to offices in cases not otherwise provided for; to be ineligible a second time, and to be removable on impeachment and conviction of malpractice or neglect of duty; to receive a fixed stipend, by which he may be compensated for the devotion of his time to public service, to be paid out of the national treasury.

"10. That the national executive shall have a right to negative any legislative act, which shall not afterwards be passed unless by two thirds of each branch of the national legislature.

"11. That a national judiciary be established, to consist of one supreme tribunal, the judges of which to be appointed by the second branch of the national legislature, to hold their offices during good behavior, and to receive punctually, at stated times, a fixed compensation for their services, in which no increase or diminution shall be made, so as to affect the persons actually in office at the time of such increase or diminution. "12. That the national legislature be empowered to appoint inferior tribunals.

66

13. That the jurisdiction of the national judiciary shall extend to cases which respect the collection of the national revenue, cases arising under the laws of the United States, impeachments of any national officer, and questions which involve the national peace and harmony.

"14. Resolved, That provision ought to be made for the admission of states lawfully arising within the limits of the United States, whether from a voluntary junction of government, territory, or otherwise, with the consent of a number of voices in the national legislature less than the whole.

"15. Resolved, That provision ought to be made for the continuance of Congress, and their authority and privileges, until a given day after the reform of the articles of union shall be adopted, and for the completion of all their engagements.