OF THE ORIGIN, FORMATION, AND ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES; WITH NOTICES OF ITS PRINCIPAL FRAMERS. BY GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME I. NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS, FRANKLIN Square. 1860. 65263.1.4 4m H300.2 1892, 54.28. Harvard University. Gift of port Prof. A. B. Part. TRANSFERRED TO MARVARY COLLEGE LIBEARI - 'G 2. 1935 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by GEORGE T. CURTIS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 37-76 то GEORGE TICKNOR, Esq., THE HISTORIAN OF SPANISH LITERATURE, BY WHOSE ACCURATE SCHOLARSHIP AND CAREFUL CRITICISM THESE PAGES HAVE LARGELY PROFITED, I DEDICATE THIS WORK, IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TIES, WHICH HAVE BEEN TO ME CONSTANT SOURCES OF HAPPINESS THROUGH MY WHOLE LIFE. PREFACE. A SPECIAL history of the origin and establishment of the Constitution of the United States has not yet found a place in our national literature. Many years ago, I formed the design of writing such a work, for the purpose of exhibiting the deep causes which at once rendered the Convention of 1787 inevitable, and controlled or directed its course and decisions; the mode in which its great work was accomplished; and the foundations on which our national liberty and prosperity were then deliberately settled by the statesmen to whom the American Revolution gave birth, and on which they have rested ever since. In the prosecution of this purpose I had, until death terminated his earthly interests, the encouragement and countenance of that illustrious person, whose relation to the Constitution of the United States, during the last forty years, has been not |