tem proves inefficient, conviction of the necessity of a change will be disseminated among all classes of the people. Then, and not till then, in my opinion, can it be attempted without involving all the evils' of civil discord."

"1

There were other difficulties besides those which may be called legal, or technical, attending this effort to revise the system of the federal government. The failure of that system, as it had been put in operation in 1781, had, to a great extent, chilled the hopes of many of the best statesmen of America. It had been established under auspices which seemed to promise far different fruits from those it had actually produced. Its foundations were laid in the patriotism and national feeling of the States. The concessions which had been made to secure a union of republics, having various, and, in some respects, conflicting interests, seemed at first to guarantee the prompt and faithful performance of its obligations. But this fair promise had melted into most unsubstantial performance. The Confederation was framed upon a principle which never has enabled, and probably never will enable, a government to become effective and permanent, the principle of a league.

Another and a very serious cause for discouragement was the sectional jealousy and State pride which had been constantly growing, from the Declaration of Independence to the time when the States were called upon to meet each other upon broader

1 Sparks's Washington, IX. 223, 225, 230, 236, 508-520.

grounds, and to make even larger sacrifices than at any former period. It is difficult to trace to all its causes the feeling which has at times arrayed the different extremities of this Union against each other. It was very early developed, after the different provinces were obliged to act together for their great mutual objects of political independence; but, even in its highest paroxysms, it has always at last found an antidote in the deeper feelings and more sober calculations of a consistent patriotism. Perhaps its prevalence and activity may with more truth be ascribed, in every generation, to the ambition of men who find in it a convenient instrument of local influence, rather than to any other cause. It is certain, that, when it has raged most violently, this has been its chief aggravating element. The differences of neither manners, institutions, climate, nor pursuits would at any time have been sufficient to create the perils to which the Union of the States has occasionally been exposed, without the mischievous agency of men whose personal objects are, for the time, subserved by the existence of such peculiarities. The proof of this is to be found in the fact, that the seasonable sagacity of the people has always detected the motives of those who have sought to employ their passions, and has compelled them at last to give way to that better order of men who have appealed to their reason.

The difficulty of getting the assent of all the States to radical changes in the federal system, and the uncertainty as to the mode in which such changes could

be effectively adopted, were also among the reasons which led many persons to regard the Convention as an experiment of doubtful expediency. The States had hitherto acted only in their corporate capacities, in all that concerned the formation and modification of the Union. The idea of a Union founded on the direct action of the people of the States, in a primary sense, and proceeding to establish a federal government, of limited powers, in the same manner in which the people of each State had established their local constitutions, had not been publicly broached, and was not generally entertained. Indeed, there was no expectation on the part of any State, when the delegates to the Convention were appointed, that any other principle would be adopted as the basis of action, than that by which the Articles of Confederation contemplated that all changes should be effected by the action of the States assembled in Congress, confirmed by the unanimous assent of the different State legislatures.

The prevailing feeling, among the higher statesmen of the country, was, that the Convention was an experiment of doubtful tendency, but one that must nevertheless be tried. Washington, Madison, Jay, Knox, Edmund Randolph, have all left upon record the evidence of their doubts and their fears, as well as of their convictions of the necessity for this last effort in favor of the preservation of a republican form of government.1 Hamilton advanced to meet

1 Sparks's Washington, IX. 223, 225, 230, 236, 508-520.

the crisis, with perhaps less hesitation than any of the Revolutionary statesmen. His great genius for political construction; his large knowledge of the means by which a regulated liberty may be secured; and the long study with which he had contemplated the condition of the country, led him to enter the Convention with more of eagerness and hope than most of its members. He saw, with great clearness, that the difficulty which embarrassed nearly all his contemporaries - the question of the mode of en acting a new constitution was capable of solution. He did not propound that solution in advance of the assembling of the Convention; for it was eminently necessary that the States should not be alarmed by the suggestion of a principle so novel and so unlike the existing theory of the Union. But he was fully prepared to announce it, so soon as it could be received and acted upon.

It was under such auspices and with such views that the Convention assembled at Philadelphia, on the fourteenth day of May in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-seven.

At that time, the world had witnessed no such spectacle as that of the deputies of a nation, chosen by the free action of great communities, and assembled for the purpose of thoroughly reforming its constitution, by the exercise, and with the authority, of the national will. All that had been done, both in ancient and in modern times, in forming, moulding, or modifying constitutions of government, bore little

resemblance to the present undertaking of the States of America. Neither among the Greeks nor the Romans was there a precedent, and scarcely an analogy. The ancient leagues of some of the cities or republics of Greece did not amount to constitutions, in the sense of modern political science; and the Roman republic was but the domination of a single race of the inhabitants of a single city.

In modern Europe, we find no trace of political science until after the nations were divided, and partial limits set to the different orders and powers of the state. The feudal system, which acknowledged no relations in society but those of lord and serf, necessarily forbade all consideration of any forms of government which were not essentially founded on that relation; and it was not until that relation had been in some degree broken in upon, that there began to be any thing like theoretical inquiries into natural rights. When this took place,

- at the end, or towards the end, of the Middle Ages, -the peculiar forms of the European governments gave rise to inquiries into the relation of sovereign and subject. From the beginning of the fifteenth down to the end of the seventeenth century, there were occasional discussions on the Continent, growing out of particular events, of such questions as the right of the people to depose bad princes, and how far it was lawful to resist oppression. But questions of constitutional form, or of the right of the people to arrange and distribute the different powers of government, or the best mode of doing it, did not arise at all.