USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. I > Part 10
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mond," was published in The Academy, December, 1887, Vol. II, No. 9, pp. 403, 412, by Dr. Herbert B. Adams, of Johns-Hopkins University. A copy of Quesnay's rare " Memoire" is in the library of the State of Virginia. Quesnay complains bitterly that all his letters relating to his service in the American army had been stolen from a pigeon-hole in Governor Henry's desk, and his promotion thus prevented.
82 This resolution was merely formal, ordering the Constitution to be transmitted to the legislatures of the States. It may be seen in Fo- brell's edition of the Journals of the old Congress, IX, 110.
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leading measures of general legislation during the war and after its close; his position as a prominent member of the General Convention that framed the Constitution, which had been adopted under his solemn protest, and his well-known resolve to oppose the ratification with all his acknowledged abilities, were calcu- lated to arrest attention. He was sixty-two years old, and had not been more than twelve years continuously in the public coun- cils, 83 but from his entrance into public life he was confessedly the first man in every assembly of which he was a member, though rarely seen on the floor except on great occasions. But the interest with which he was now watched was heightened by another cause. From his lips was anxiously awaited by all par- ties the programme of the war which was to be waged against the new system. He rose to a matter of form. "I hope and trust," he said, " that this Convention, appointed by the people, on this great occasion, for securing, as far as possible, to the latest generations their happiness and liberty, will freely and fully investigate this important subject. For this purpose I humbly conceive the fullest and clearest investigation indispensa- bly necessary, and that we ought not to be bound by any general rules whatsoever. The curse denounced by the Divine ven- geance will be small, compared with what will justly fall on us, if from any sinister views we obstruct the fullest inquiry. This subject ought, therefore, to obtain the fullest discussion, clause by clause, before any general previous question be put, nor ought it to be precluded by any other question." Tyler then moved that the Convention should resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to take into consideration the proposed plan of govern- ment, in order to have a fairer opportunity of examining its merits. Mason rose again, and after recapitulating his reasons urging a full discussion, clause by clause, concluded by giving his consent to the motion made by Tyler. Madison concurred with Mason in going into a full and free investigation of the sub- ject before them, and said that he had no objection to the plan proposed. Mason then reduced to writing his motion, which was adopted by the House.
83 Colonel Mason was a member of the House of Burgesses as early as 1758, with Pendleton and Wythe ; but did not adopt the favorite cus- tom in the Colony of holding a seat for a series of years. Even during the past twelve years he was not always a member.
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Tyler moved that the Convention resolve itself into a Com- mittee of the Whole the next day to take the plan of government under consideration, but was opposed by Henry Lee, of West- moreland, who urged the propriety of entering into the discus- sion at once. Mason rose to sustain the motion of Tyler, and pressed the impolicy of running precipitately into the discussion of a great measure, when the Convention was not in possession of the proper means. He was sustained by Benjamin Harrison, and the debate was closed by a rejoinder from Lee. The motion of Tyler prevailed, and it was resolved "that this Convention will to-morrow resolve itself into a committee of the whole Con- vention, to take into consideration the proposed Constitution of Government of the United States.''84
But, if the motion of Mason was acceptable to his opponents, it was especially distasteful to his friends. It had been foreseen that there would be some confusion among the opponents of the Constitution in respect of the line of policy to be pursued in the outset of the campaign. Mason had been a member of the General Convention, had met in conclave with the Virginia dele- gation in Philadelphia, and had not offered any opposition to the resolutions which were approved by the delegation, which were proposed by Randolph to the General Convention as its basis of action, and which clearly looked to an overthrow of the existing Federal system. He could not consequently take the ground which his colleagues in opposition, Henry in particular, thought most available, of protesting against the usurpation of a body, which, charged with the office of proposing amendments to the
84 It is interesting to see how often history repeats itself. The main argument of Lee for hastening a discussion, was that the General Assembly, in whose hall the Convention was sitting, would meet on the 23d of the month ; and as the Convention did not adjourn till the 27th, . the two bodies were in session at the same time. The Convention of 1829-30, also ran into the meeting of the General Assembly, and the two bodies sate at the same time for a month and a half. As in both Conventions there were members who were also members of the Assembly, and, as such, were entitled to double pay, it would be curious to look over the old rolls and see who took and did not take double allowance. Of the members of the Convention of 1829-30 who were in the Assembly, though they really had double duty to perform in earnest, I do not know that more than one member received double pay, albeit it was unquestionably due.
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existing government, had recommended an entirely new govern- ment in its stead. He may, however, have deemed the Act of Assembly convoking the present Convention as a substantial endorsement of the Act of the General Convention ; and with his usual sagacity may have thought it prudent, apart from any personal feeling in the case, to arrest a contest which he foresaw would result in the defeat of his friends. At this late day, unin- fluenced by the excitement of the times, we are able to appreciate the tactics of the divisions of the anti-Federal party at their proper value. The main object of Mason was to prevent a pre- mature committal of the House by a vote on any separate part of the Constitution; for he well knew that an approval of one part would be urged argumentatively to obtain the approval of another part, and that, if the Constitution were approved in detail, it would be approved as a whole; and so far as his motion postponed intermediate voting, it was wise and well-timed. But in requiring the Constitution to be discussed clause by clause, he went beyond his legitimate purpose, and played into the hands of his opponents. The Federal Constitution, to be opposed successfully, must be discussed on the ground either of its unfit- ness as a whole to attain the end of its creation, or on the dan- gerous tendency of its various provisions. To preclude the debate on the first head, and to narrow the debate on the second to the consideration of a single clause, was almost to resign the benefits of discussion to the friends of the system. The resolu- tion was capable of being wielded with fatal effect, and, if enforced by a skillful and stern parliamentarian, would have effectually prevented all freedom of debate. The anti-Federalists believed that the Constitution in its general scope was false to liberty ; yet, by the resolution, they were to be strictly confined to a discussion, . not of its general tendency, but of the tendency of a particular clause. Now, it is barely possible that a single provision of a vast system, when defended at length by an able hand, cannot be made to assume a plausible shape in the eyes of a mixed assem- bly. Either its obvious meaning will be denied, or an equivocal one will be attached to its terms. The Federalists were aware of the advantages of such a warfare, and hence the readiness with which Madison rose to accept the proposal.85 Indeed, it is
85 Madison wrote on the 4th to Washington a letter, of which the
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a topic of interest .now to observe how often the dogged perti- nacity of George Nicholas and Madison, who acted the part of whippers-in during the discussion, was rebuked by the indignant eloquence of Mason and Henry. 86 It is true that the timely movement of Tyler in transferring the debate from the House to the Committee of the Whole in some measure counteracted the ill effects of Mason's motion ; but its evil influence was sensibly felt by his friends throughout the session.
The opening of the session on the third day 87 was awaited by a large assemblage. Every seat was filled, while hundreds of respectable persons remained standing in the passages and at the doors. Among the spectators from every part of the Common- wealth were young men of promise, eager to behold the states- men who had long served their country with distinction, whose names were connected with every important civil and military event of the Revolution; and some of whom were to be seen now for the last time in a public body, and must in the order of nature soon pass away. It is not unworthy of remark, as an illustration of the effects wrought by the exhibition of genius and talents on great occasions, that some of those young men who were so intently watching the progress of the debates, as if touched by the inspiration of the scene, were themselves to lead the deliberations of public bodies and to control the councils of the State and of the Union for more than the third of a century to come. 88
following is an extract: "I found, contrary to my expectations, that not a very full House had been made on the first day, but that it had proceeded to the appointment of the president and other officers. Mr. Pendleton was put into the chair without opposition. Yesterday little more was done than settling some forms, and resolving that no ques- tion, general or particular, should be propounded till the whole plan should be considered and debated clause by clause. This was moved by Colonel Mason, and, contrary to his expectations, concurred in by the other side." Madison to General Washington, Writings of Wash- ington, IX, 370, note.
86 Robertson's Debates, page 36, et passim. I use Robertson's Debates, edition of 1805; the handsome edition of the Debates following the entire third volume of Elliott, published in 1859 under the sanction of Congress, not having then appeared.
87 Wednesday, June 4, 1788.
" No such thing as a published speech was then known in the coun-
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It was the general expectation that Henry would open the debate on the part of the opponents of the Constitution ; but those who knew the conflicting positions held by Mason and himself, and had watched him closely on the preceding day, anticipated a skirmish before the regular debate began; and in this expectation they were not disappointed. When the House had received and acted upon the reports of the Committee of Elections, the order of the day was read, and the Convention went into Committee of the Whole. Wythe was called to the chair.89 Next to Pendleton, his fame as a jurist and a statesman had been more widely diffused at home and abroad than that of any other member. He had been longest in the public service ; had long been a member of the House of Burgesses, which he entered as early as 1758 ; had been the intimate and confidential
try, and the only means of forming an opinion of the powers of a pub- lic man was to hear him speak. Brief and imperfect as Robertson's Debates are, they present the fullest report of speeches then known in our annals. Hence, the clever young men of the State crowded to Richmond. all of them on horseback. William B. Giles was among the spectators.
89 I have never met with an instance in our parliamentary proceedings of the election of the chairman of the Committee of the Whole by the House. In the House of Burgesses the chairman, as the name implies, literally sate in a chair, none but the Speaker, who had been approved by the Governor, and was in some sense the representative of majesty, occupying the Speaker's seat. In Committee of the Whole, the mace, which was always placed on the clerk's table in regular session, was put under the table. I confess that I have not been able to trace satis- factorily the fate of the mace of the House of Burgesses. I have been told that it was melted at some date later than 1790. There was a member of the Senate from one of the tidewater counties who made great efforts to get a mace from the Senate. The city of Norfolk still possesses its ancient silver mace presented to the corporation by Gov- ernor Gooch in 1736 or thereabouts. This mace, of which a description and a cut is given in The Dinwiddie Papers, Vol. I (Virginia Historical Collections, Vol. III), pp. xiv, xv, was "The gift of Hon. Robert Din- widdie, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, to the corporation of Nor- folk, 1753." For notice of further examples of the mace in Virginia and other British-American colonies, see the same note. The mace of the House of Burgesses, which was by purchase saved from the "smelter's pot " by Colonel William Heth, who transformed it into a drinking cup, is now in the possession of his grand nephew, Harry Heth, late Major-General C. S. Army .- ED.
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friend of Fauquier and Botetourt, and the associate of all the royal governors of Virginia who in his time had any pretensions as gentlemen and scholars ; had spoken in the great debate on the Declaration of Independence in Congress; had voted for the Declaration of Rights and the Constitution of Virginia ; had filled the chair of the House of Delegates, when Pendleton, suf- fering from his recent accident, was detained at home, and had acquired in the performance of his various duties that knowl. edge of the law of parliament and those habits of a presiding officer, which were now indispensable to an occupant of the chair. His position in one respect was unique. As a professor of Wil- liam and Mary, he had trained some of the ablest members of the House, who regarded him with a veneration greater than that, great as it was, which was shared by the public at large.90 He had reached his sixty-second year; yet as he moved with a brisk and graceful step from the floor to the chair, his small and erect stature presented a pleasing image of a fresh and healthy old man. In a front view, as he sate in the chair, he appeared to be bald ; but his gray hair grew thick behind, and instead of being wrapped with a ribbon, as was then and many years later the universal custom, descended to his neck, and rose in a broad curl He had not yet given way to that disarrangement of his apparel which crept upon him in extreme age, and was arrayed in the neat and simple dress that has come down to us in the portrait engraved by Longacre.91 Though never robust, he was now more able to bear, in a physical sense, the formidable ordeal of the chair than Pendleton. He had been a member of the General Convention which framed the Constitution, and had assented to the Virginia platform presented to that body ; but, as he was absent when that instrument was subscribed by the members, his name did not appear on its roll. He was, however, in favor of its ratification.
When Wythe had taken his seat, before he had ordered the clerk to read the first clause of the Constitution, Henry was on the floor. It was observed that age had made itself felt in the
90 Among the numerous pupils of Wythe in the Convention were Chief Justice Marshall, President Monroe, George and Wilson Cary Nicholas, Read, Innes, Lewis, Samuel Jordan Cabell, &c.
91 A single-breasted coat. with a standing collar, a single-breasted vest, and a white cravat buckled behind.
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appearance of this early and constant favorite of the people. He should have been in the vigor of life, for he had just entered his fifty-third year; but he had encountered many hardships in his vagrant life as a practising attorney, and had endured much trouble as a man and as a patriot. There was a perceptible stoop in his shoulders, and he wore glasses. His hair he had lost in early life, and its place was supplied by a brown wig, the adjust- ment of which, when under high excitement, was, as alleged by his contemporaries, a frequent gesture.9? He had doubtless suffered at intervals from a painful organic disease which more than any other racks the system, and which eleven years later brought him to the grave. But his voice had not yet lost its wondrous magic, 93 and his intellectual powers knew no decline. He was to display before the adjournment an ability in debate and a splendor of eloquence, which surpassed all his previous efforts, and which have rarely been exhibited in a public assem- bly.
Neither Mason nor Henry was skilled in the law of parlia- ment; but it is probable that Henry, in his solitary drive from Prince Edward, had formed some outline of the course which he intended to pursue. It was generally known that the Federal- ists believed that they made up a majority of the House; and he well knew that if Pendleton were nominated, as he certainly would be, for the chair, he would be elected above any com- petitor. Such a man carried with him not only the weight of his party, but his weight as an individual. To oppose him, there- fore, was to risk a signal defeat; and from a signal defeat in the onset it might not be easy to recover. The election of president was allowed accordingly to pass in silence. The next plausible
92 I have heard Governor Tazewell say that he has seen Henry, in animated debate, twirl his wig round his head several times in rapid succession. Our fathers had better eyes than their descendants. Glasses were rarely worn. Colonel Thomas Lewis was the only mem- ber of the Convention that wore them habitually. Patrick Henry and Judge Wilson, of Pennsylvania, are the only two men of the Revolu- tionary era who are painted with glasses. Franklin wore them in the Federal Convention, but he was over eighty at that time.
93 He told his family that he lost his voice in pleading the British Debts' cause in 1791 ; but that loss none who heard him speak at any time afterwards could detect.
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ground of attack was to be sought in the various Acts of Assem- bly which had called the General Convention into existence. The most important of these acts had been plainly violated by that body, and the new scheme was the offspring of usurpation ; and Henry thought that, if this view was presented in all its fearful extent by his friends, the result might yet be an immedi- ate rejection of the new government. But he had to deal with one of the wariest parliamentarians of that age. When, therefore, Henry moved, as he now proceeded to do, that the various Acts of Assembly should be read by the clerk, evidently intending to follow up the reading with a speech, Pendleton, who, foreseeing the game, was on the watch, and who feared the effect of one of Henry's speeches in the yet unfixed state of parties, was in- stantly helped on his crutches, and opposed the reading.º He did not speak more than fifteen minutes; but the effect of his speech was conclusive. It was an occasion of all others best adapted to his talents. The discussion in his view involved no great principle to be treated at large, but the interpretation of an Act of Assembly. He occupied the ground at once on which Henry would have sought to place him by force. He boldly assumed the position that, whatever might be the meaning of the Act calling the General Convention, the Act of Assembly con- voking the present Convention for the express purpose of dis- cussing the paper on the table was paramount to all other Acts, and was the rule of action prescribed by the people. Did this speech exist as spoken by Pendleton, posterity might read in the speech itself and in its circumstances the peculiarities of his mind and character. Assign him the ground he was to occupy- plant him on the rampart of an Act of Assembly-and he was invincible. Such was the effect of his speech that Henry made no reply, and not caring to court a defeat, which he saw was inevitable, withdrew his resolution.
But, if Henry had a favorite plan, the Federalists had one of their own ; and that plan was to discuss the Constitution, clause by clause, in the House under the eye of a president to be elected by themselves ; a mode which had already been adopted on the
94 The general reader may perhaps not know that the president or speaker of a House on the Committee of the Whole sits with the mem- bers in the body of the House, and is free to engage in the debates, which he cannot do when in the chair.
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motion of Mason, who little dreamed that he was treading in the tracks of his foes. Fortunately for the opponents of the Con - stitution, Tyler, who, as Speaker of the House of Delegates, had been familiar with the tactics of deliberative bodies, and who was opposed to the new scheme, had, as if in anticipation of the purposes of the Federalists, succeeded in transferring the dis- cussions to the Committee of the Whole.
The clerk proceeded to read the preamble of the Constitution and the two first sections of the first article. When he had read them, George Nicholas rose to explain and defend them. There was a prestige in the name of Nicholas, and in the forensic repu- tation of the gentleman who now bore it, which placed him in the front rank of what may be called the second growth of emi- nent men who attained to distinction during the Revolution, and the brightness of whose genius has been reflected even in our own times. The eldest son of the venerable patriot who so long held the keys of the treasury, and whose death, in the midst of the Revolution in which he had freely embarked his great ser- vices and a reputation that in the eyes of his compatriots ap- proached to sanctity, had sealed his fame as a martyr in his country's cause, George Nicholas entered public life under favor- able auspices. Born in the city of Williamsburg, and nurtured in that institution which has been for more than a century and a half the gem of the ancient metropolis, he early engaged in the study of the law, and soon rose to the highest distinction at the bar. Nor was his professional skill his only passport to pub- lic attention. He had entered the army at the beginning of the war, and displayed more than once a capacity for military ser- vice that received the approbation of his superiors. But it was in the House of Delegates that he gained his highest distinction. During the war, and until the meeting of the present Convention, he held a prominent place in that body, which he almost entirely controlled, now threatening with impeachment the first execu- tive officer of the Commonwealth, now planning the laws which were to constitute the titles to land in that immense principality which reached from the Alleghany to the Mississippi.º5 His
95 Benjamin Watkins Leigh has been heard to say that George Mason drafted the first land law ; but it is certain that George Nicholas ex- erted a greater influence in shaping the land laws than any other man.
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appearance was far from prepossessing. His stature was low, ungainly, and deformed with fat. His head was bald, his nose curved ; a gray eye glanced from beneath his shaggy brows ; and his voice, though strong and clear, was without modulation. His address, which had been polished by long and intimate asso- ciation in the most refined circles of the Colony, to which by birth he belonged, and of the Commonwealth ; his minute ac- quaintance with every topic of local legislation ; his ready com- mand of that historical knowledge within the range of a well- educated lawyer of the old régime ; perfect self-possession, which had been acquired in many a contest at the bar and in the House of Delegates with most of the able men now opposed to him, and which enabled him to wield at will a robust logic in debate which few cared to encounter, made him one of the most prom- ising of that group of rising statesmen who had caught their inspiration from the lips of Wythe. Without one ray of fancy gleaming throughout his discourse, without action, unless the use of his right hand and forefinger, as if he were demonstrating a proposition on a black-board, be so called, by the force of argu- ment applied to his subject as if the sections of the Constitution were sections of an Act of Assembly, he kept that audience, the most intellectual, perhaps, ever gathered during that century under a single roof in the Colony or in the Commonwealth, anxious as it was for the appearance of the elder members in the debate, for more than two hours in rapt attention. His speech is one of the fullest reported by Robertson, and its strict and masterly examination of the two sections before the House, ex- plains the interest which it awakened and which it sustained.96 Henry, who probably saw his mistake in allowing one of the
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