can establishment, "the effect of their late confusion."* One man alone, Bingham of Pennsylvania, avowed the wish that the Confederation might be split up into several distinct parts.

On one point, however, there was entire unanimity. "All agreed that the federal government ... could not last long."†

* Gilpin's Madison, II., 583.

† Ibid.

CHAPTER V.

revolution or DISSOLUTION &

HAYS' rebellion and New York's final refusal (Feb

SH

ruary 15, 1787) to consent to the revenue scheme of 1783 promoted the plan agreed upon by Hamilton and Madison at the Annapolis convention. These events made the friends of order and good government feel more strongly than ever that a supreme effort should be made to rescue the affairs of the country from confusion and anarchy.

The result was an assembly, at Philadelphia, of delegates, fifty-five in number, composed of a remarkably large proportion of extraordinary men. the members of Otto, the French minister, said they were equal in talent, knowledge, and patriotism

Character of

the convention.

to any assembly which had ever gathered in Europe.* That was not too much to say of a body of men which included Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Rufus King, Gouverneur and Robert Morris, George Mason, Oliver Ellsworth, to say nothing of Roger Sherman, Caleb Strong, Elbridge Gerry, C. C. Pinckney, James Wilson, Edmund Randolph, Rutledge, and many others hardly, if at all, inferior to these in ability. Jefferson called it an "assembly of demigods." If any

* Otto to Vergennes, April 10, 1787. Quoted by Bancroft, History of the Constitution, Vol. II., 417.

body of Americans could disregard its instructions with impunity, and set aside the Articles of Confederation, it was this.

Virginia dele

The day fixed for opening the convention was May 14. But not until the 25th of the month did the arrival of the delegates from New Jersey make a quorum of seven states. The interval was well spent by the delegation from Virginia. Madison had been making careful preparation for the work which was to give him the proud title of "Father of the Constitution." He had gone to Philadelphia with definite gates consider ideas as to the sort of constitution which ought to take the place of the Articles of Confederation. During those ten days the Virginia delegation spent two or three hours a day in considering Madison's plan.* When the New Jersey delegates arrived, the delegates from Virginia were able to present it, modified in some details, as the plan of Virginia.

Madison's plan.

The day before the organization of the convention, Washington, in conversation with the delegates, made a

very impressive speech. We know how he Washington's felt from his correspondence: that all of speech.

the hopes of the nation were staked on the convention; that if it adjourned without accomplishing anything, or if the result of its labors were rejected by the people, there would be an end of all federal government. With this feeling of the tremendous issues involved, he said:

* Bancroft's History of the Constitution, II., 5.

"It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hands of God."* The convention was organized May 25, and Washington was chosen president. On May 29, Edmund

The Virginia plan.

Randolph, who, as governor of Virginia, was regarded as the official head of the Virginia delegation, introduced the main business of the convention by presenting the Virginia plan.† On the question most vital to the work of the conventionwhether the Articles of Confederation were to be merely revised, or whether a new constitution from the ground up was to be made-Randolph's speech showed that the Virginia delegates had made up their minds. Any changes in the Articles which could fairly be called a revision of them had to leave their basal principle untouched. That principle was the principle of state sovereignty. It was in deference to this principle that the Articles provided that each state was to have a single vote, that the laws of Congress affecting the citizens of the states should be executed by those states, and that changes in the Articles, in order to be valid, must receive the assent of every state. To propose a

*Oration of Gouverneur Morris on the death of Washington, 21, 22.

† Elliott, I., 143-5.

constitution which provided that some states should have more power in the government than others, was to say that the states were not on a footing of perfect equality, was to lay the axe at the root of the dogma of state sovereignty. To propose a constitution which provided that the federal government should execute its own laws upon the citizens of the states whether their legislatures approved them or not, was to make the dogma of state sovereignty ridiculous. What sort of sovereignty would that be which could not protect the citizens of the state from the operation of laws enacted by an outside, and therefore foreign, government? But the same iron necessity which had so often laughed at the theories of the Confederation left to the convention no choice, and the Virginia delegates knew it. The situation required them to choose between a government which could execute its own laws, and the monstrosity of the Confederation, which, in matters vital to the nation's well-being, was no government at all; between giving to states power in proportion to their importance, and continuing to give Delaware and Rhode Island as much power as Massachusetts and Virginia; between making a constitution to go into effect when adopted by some number of states less than the whole, and permitting little Rhode Island -which was the only state that had appointed no delegates to the convention-to veto the entire scheme.

We know from Madison's correspondence that he went to Philadelphia with clearly defined ideas on all of