his influence and that of Oliver Wolcott, Richard Law, and Governor Huntington, the Constitution was ratified by a large majority, on the 9th of January.1

The action of Connecticut completed the list of the States that ratified the Constitution without any formal record of objections, and without proposing or insisting upon amendments. The opposition in these five States had been. overcome by reason and argument, and they were a majority of the whole number of States whose accession was necessary to the establishment of the government. But a new act in the drama was to open with the new year. The conventions of Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia were still to meet, and each of them was full of elements of opposition of the most formidable character, and of different kinds, which made the result in all of them extremely doubtful. If all the three were to adopt the Constitution, still one more must be gained from the States of New Hampshire, Maryland, and North and South Carolina. The influence of each accession to the Constitution on the remaining States might be expected to be considerable; but, unfortunately, the convention of New Hampshire was to meet five months before those of Virginia and New York, and a large number of its members had been instructed to reject the Constitu

and Pennsylvania, £160,000 or £180,000 per annum had been raised by impost.

1 Fragments only of the debates

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in the convention of Connecticut are known to be preserved. They may be found in the second volume of Elliot's collection.

tion. If New Hampshire and Massachusetts were to refuse their assent in the course of the winter, the States that were to act in the spring could scarcely be expected to withstand the untoward influence of such an example, which would probably operate with a constantly accelerating force throughout the whole number of the remaining States.

The convention of Massachusetts commenced its session on the 9th of January, the same day on which that of Connecticut closed its proceedings. The State certainly held a very high rank in the Union. Her Revolutionary history was filled with glory; with sufferings cheerfully borne; with examples of patriotism that were to give her enduring fame. The blood of martyrs in that cause, which she had made from the first the cause of the whole country, had been poured profusely upon her soil, and in the earlier councils of the Union she had maintained a position of commanding influence. But there had been in her political conduct, since the freedom of the country was achieved, an unsteadiness and vacillation of which her former reputation gave no presage. In 1783, the legislature had refused to give the revenue powers asked for by the Congress, for the miserable reason that the Congress had granted half-pay for life to the officers of the Revolutionary army. In May, 1785, the legislature adopted a resolution for a convention of the States to consider the subject of enlarging the powers of the Federal Union, and in the following November they rescinded it. These, and other oc

currences, when remembered, gave the friends of the Constitution elsewhere great anxiety, as they turned their eyes towards Massachusetts. They were fully aware, too, that the recent insurrection in that State, and the severe measures which had followed it, had created divisions in society which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to heal.

But it was not easy for the most intelligent men out of the State to appreciate fully all the causes that exposed the Constitution of the United States to a peculiar hazard in Massachusetts, and made it necessary to procure its ratification by a kind of compromise with the opposition for a scheme of amendments. In no State was the spirit of liberty more jealous and exacting. In the midst of the Revolution, and led by the men who had carried on the profound discussions which preceded it, - discussions in which the natural rights of mankind and the civil rights of British subjects were examined and displayed as they had never been before, — the people of Massachusetts had framed a State constitution, filled with the most impressive maxims and the most solemn securities with which public liberty has ever been invested. Not content to trust obvious truths to implication, they expressly declared that government is instituted for the happiness and welfare of the governed, and they fenced it round not only with the chief restrictions gained by their English ancestors, from Magna Charta down to the Revolution of 1688, but with many safeguards which had not descended to them from Runnymede or

Westminster. It may be that an anxious student of politics, examining the early constitution of Massachusetts, happily in its most important features yet unchanged, would pronounce it unnecessarily careful of personal rights and too jealous for the interests of liberty. But no intelligent mind, thoughtful of the welfare of society, can now think that to have been an excess of wisdom which formed a constitution of republican government that has so well withstood the assaults of faction and the levelling tendencies of a levelling age, and has withstood them because, while it carefully guarded the liberties of the people, it secured those liberties by institutions which stand as bulwarks between the power of the many and the rights of the few.

It may hereafter become necessary for me to consider what degree of importance justly belongs to the amendments which the State of Massachusetts, and to those which other States, so impressively insisted ought to be made to the Constitution of the United States. Without at present turning farther aside from the narrative of events, I content myself here with observing, that, whether the alleged defects in the Constitution were important or unimportant, a people educated as the people of Massachusetts had been would naturally regard some provisions as essential which they did not find in the plan presented to them.

The general aspect of parties in Massachusetts, down to the time when the convention met, has been already considered. In the convention itself there

was a majority originally opposed to the Constitution; and if a vote had been taken at any time before the proposition for amendments was brought forward, the Constitution would have been rejected. The opposition consisted of a full representation of the various parties and interests already described as existing among the people of the State who were unfriendly to it. One contemporary account gives as many as eighteen or twenty members, who had actually been out in what was called Shays's "army." Whether this enumeration was strictly correct or not, it is well known that the western counties of the State sent a large number of men whose sympathies were with that insurrection, who were friends of paper money and tender laws, and enemies of any system that would promote the security of debts. The members from the province of Maine had their own special objects to pursue. In addition to these were the honest and well-meaning doubters, who had examined the Constitution with care and objected to it from principle. The anticipated leader of this miscellaneous host was that celebrated and ardent patriot of the Revolution, Samuel Adams. With all his energy and his iron determination of character, however, he could be cautious when caution was expedient. He had read the Constitution, and all the principal publications respecting it which had then appeared, and down to the time of the meeting of the convention he had maintained a good deal of reserve. But it was known that he disapproved

of it.