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ative system proposed in the Constitution was the only one that could be agreed upon as the alternative. Mr. Martin's objections, however, like those of other distinguished men who took the same side in other States, were of a nature to form the creed of an earnest, conscientious, and active minority. They had this effect in the State of Maryland. The legislature ordered a State convention, to consider the proposed Constitution, and directed it to meet on the 21st of April, 1788.

The convention of New Hampshire was to assemble in February. A large portion of the State lay remote from the channels of intelligence, and a considerable part of the people in the interior had not seen the Constitution, when they were called upon to elect their delegates. The population, outside of two or three principal places, was a rural one, thinly scattered over townships of large territorial extent, lying among the hills of a broken and rugged country, extending northerly from the narrow strip of sea-coast towards the frontier of Canada. It was easy for the opposition to persuade such a people that a scheme of government had been prepared which they ought to reject; and the consequence of their efforts was that the State convention assembled, probably with a majority, certainly with a strong minority, of its members bound by positive instructions to vote against the Constitution which they were to consider.

I have thus, in anticipation of the strict order of events, given a general account of the position of

this great question in six of the States, down to the time of the meeting of their respective conventions, because when the session of the convention of Massachusetts commenced, in January, 1788, the people of the five States of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut had successively ratified the Constitution without proposing any amendments, and because the action of the others, extending through the six following months, embraced the real crisis to which the Constitution was subjected, and developed what were thereafter to be considered as its important defects, according to the view of a majority of the States, and probably also of a majority of the people of all the States. For although the people of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut ratified the Constitution without insisting on previous or subsequent amendments, it is certain that some of the same topics were the causes of anxiety and objection in those States, which occasioned so much difficulty, and became the grounds of special action, in the remaining States.

In coming, however, to the more particular description of the resistance which the Constitution encountered, it will be necessary to discriminate between the opposition that was made to the general plan of the government, or to the particular features of it which it was proposed to create, and that which was founded on its omission to provide for certain things that were deemed essential. Of what may be called the positive objections to the Constitution, it may be said,

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in general, that, however fruitful of debate, or declamation, or serious and important doubt, might be the question whether such a government as had been framed by the national Convention should be substituted for the Confederation, the opposition were not confined to this question, as the means of persuading the people that the proposed system ought to be rejected. One of the most deeply interested of the men who were watching the currents of public opinion with extreme solicitude, observed “a strong belief in the people at large of the insufficiency of the Confederation to preserve the existence of the Union, and of the necessity of the Union to their safety and prosperity; of course, a strong desire of a change, and a predisposition to receive well the propositions of the Convention."1 But while the Constitution came before the people with this conviction and this predisposition in its favor, yet when its opponents, in addition to their positive objections to what it did contain, could point to what it did not embrace, and could say that it proposed to establish a government of great power, without providing for rights of primary importance, and without any declaration of the cardinal maxims of liberty which the people had from the first been accustomed to incorporate with their State constitutions; and while the local interests, the sectional feelings, and the separate policy, real or supposed, of different States, furnished such a variety of means for defeating its adoption by the necessary number of nine States; -we

1 Hamilton, Works, II. 419, 420.

may not wonder that its friends should have been doubtful of the issue. "It is almost arrogance, said the same anxious observer, "in so complicated a subject, depending so entirely upon the incalculable fluctuations of the human passions, to attempt even a conjecture about the result." 1

1 Hamilton, Works, II. 421.

CHAPTER II.

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RATIFICATIONS OF DELAWARE, PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, GEORGIA, AND CONNECTICUT, WITHOUT OBJECTION. CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1787. BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1788. - RATIFICATION OF MASSACHUSETTS, THE SIXTH STATE, WITH PROPOSITIONS OF AMENDMENT. - RATIFICATION OF MARYLAND, WITHOUT OBJECTION.-SOUTH CAROLINA, THE EIGHTH STATE, ADOPTS, AND PROPOSES AMENDMENTS.

THE first State that ratified the Constitution, although its convention was not the first to assemble, was Delaware. It was a small, compact community, with the northerly portion of its territory lying near the city of Philadelphia, with which its people had constant and extensive intercourse. Its public men were intelligent and patriotic. In the national Convention it had contended with great spirit for the interests of the smaller States, and its people now had the sagacity and good sense to perceive that they had gained every reasonable security for their peculiar rights. The public press of Philadelphia friendly to the Constitution furnished the means of understanding its merits, and the discussions in the convention of Pennsylvania, which assembled before that of Delaware, threw a flood of light over the whole subject, which the people of Delaware did not

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