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 11
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96 See Robertson's Debates of the Virginia Convention of 1788, page 18. I have alluded to the fatness of Nicholas. As he continued a prominent politician to his death in Kentucky in 1799, and as it was hard to meet his argument, his opponents resorted to caricature, and pictured him as broad as he was long. A friend told me that he once saw Mr. Madison laugh till the tears came into his eyes at a caricature of George Nicholas, which represented him " as a plum pudding with legs to it." He was probably one of the fattest lawyers since the days of his namesake Sir Nicholas Bacon, the lord keeper, who was so blown by the mere effort of taking his seat in the court of chancery that it was understood that no lawyer should address him until he had sig- nified the recovery of his wind by three taps of his cane on the floor.
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ablest friends of the Constitution to be the first to reach the ear of the House, followed Nicholas on the debate. If Nicholas adhered to the letter of the two sections, Henry did not follow his example; nor did he allude to those sections or to the speech of Nicholas, but spoke as if his resolution had been adopted, and the desired information had been obtained by the committee. He began by saying that the public mind as well as his own was extremely weary at the proposed change of government. "Give me leave," he said, "to form one of the number of those who wish to be thoroughly acquainted with the reasons of this peril- ous and uneasy situation, and why we are brought hither to decide on this great national question. I consider myself as the servant of the people of this Commonwealth, as a sentinel over their rights, liberty and happiness. I represent their feelings when I say that they are exceedingly uneasy, being brought from that state of full security which they enjoyed to the present delusive appearance of things. A year ago the minds of our citizens were in perfect repose. Before the meeting of the late Federal Convention at Philadelphia, a general peace and an uni- versal tranquility prevailed in this country ; but since that period, the people are exceedingly uneasy and disquieted. When I wished for an appointment to this Convention, my mind was extremely agitated for the situation of public affairs. I conceive the public to be in extreme danger. If our situation be thus uneasy, whence has arisen this fearful jeopardy ? It arises from this fatal system. It arises from a proposal to change our gov- ernment-a proposal that goes to the annihilation of the most solemn engagements of the States-a proposal of establishing nine States into a confederacy, to the eventual exclusion of four States. It goes to the annihilation of those solemn treaties we have formed with foreign nations. The present circumstances of France-the good offices rendered us by that kingdom-re- quire our most faithful and most punctual adherence to our treaty with her. We are in alliance with the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Prussians ; those treaties bound us as thirteen States confederated together. Yet here is a proposal to sever that confederacy. Is
it possible that we shall abandon all our treaties and national engagements? And for what? I expected to have heard the · reasons of an event so unexpected to my mind and the minds of, others. Was our civil polity or public justice endangered or
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sapped? Was the real existence of the country threatened, or was this preceded by a mournful progression of events? This proposal of altering the government is of a most alarming nature. Make the best of the new government-say it is com- posed by anything but inspiration-you ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty ; for instead of securing your rights you may lose them forever. If a wrong step be now made, the republic may be lost forever. If this new gov- ernment will not come up to the expectation of the people, and they should be disappointed, their liberty will be lost, and tyranny must and will arise. I repeat it again, and I beg gentlemen to consider, that a wrong step now will plunge us into misery, and our republic will be lost. It will be necessary for this Convention to have a faithful historical detail of the facts that preceded the session of the Federal Convention, and the reasons that actuated its members in pro- posing an entire alteration of Government, and to demonstrate the dangers that awaited us. If they were of such awful mag- nitude as to warrant a proposal so extremely perilous as this, I must assert that this Convention has an absolute right to a thorough discovery of every circumstance relative to this great event. And here I would make this inquiry of those worthy characters who composed a part of the late Federal Convention. I am sure they were fully impressed with the necessity of form- ing a great consolidated Government instead of a confederation. That this is a consolidated Government is demonstrably clear ; and the danger of such a Government is to my mind very striking. I have the highest veneration for those gentlemen ; but, sir, give me leave to demand what right had they to say, We, the people ? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them to speak the language of 'We, the People' instead of ' We, the States' ? States are the characteristics and soul of a confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great consolidated Government of the people of all the States. I have the highest respect for those gentlemen who formed the Convention ; and were some of them not here I would express some testimonial of esteem for them. America had, on a former occasion, put the utmost confidence in them-a
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confidence which was well placed-and I am sure, sir, I would give up everything to them ; I would cheerfully confide in them as my representatives. But on this great occasion I would de- mand the cause of their conduct. Even from that illustrious man, who saved us by his valor, I would have a reason for his conduct. That liberty which he has given us by his valor tells me to ask this reason; but there are other gentlemen here who can give us this information. The people gave them no power to use their name. That they exceeded their power is perfectly clear. It is not mere curiosity that actuates me. I wish to hear the real actual existing danger, which should lead us to take those steps so dangerous in my conception. Disorders have arisen in other parts of America, but here, sir, no dangers, no insurrection or tumult has happened ; everything has been calm and tranquil.97 But, notwithstanding this, we are wandering in the great ocean of human affairs. I see no landmark to guide us. We are running we know not whither. Difference of opinion has gone to a degree of inflammatory resentment in dif- ferent parts of the country, which has been occasioned by this perilous innovation. The Federal Convention ought to have amended the old system-for this purpose they were solely dele- gated-the object of their mission extended to no other considera- tion. You must therefore forgive the solicitation of one unwor-
97 This remark is strictly true. There was no disorder of any kind in Virginia. While Massachusetts was rent by intestine commotions and by a formidable rebellion, Virginia was in a state of profound tran- quility. The want of profitable employment for the labor of the North, and the low state of its marine, produced by the absence of the West India trade which it enjoyed before the war, and by the abundance of foreign shipping, are two great causes of northern troubles. Meantime our agriculture was most prosperous, and our harbors and rivers were filled with ships. The shipping interest of Norfolk was clamorous for duties on foreign tonnage, but, as we have shown in another place, was really advancing most rapidly to a degree of success never known in the Colony. The immediate representatives of that part and its vicinity were under the delusion that the new Government would en- able them to drive foreign ships away, and to fill their places with home-built vessels-a delusion that was soon dispelled in a short sea- son by the sad reality of ports without either foreign or domestic ship- ping.
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the member to know what danger could have arisen under the prevent confederation, and what are the causes of this proposal to change our Government." 98
This was the first blast from the trumpet of Henry, and hardly had its echoes died on the ear, when Edmund Randolph, evi- dently from previous arrangement, sprang to the floor. If Nicholas lacked that exterior which commends itself to the eye, Randolph, who was his brother-in-law, was in that respect par- ticularly fortunate. He had attained his thirty-seventh year, and was in the flower of his manhood. His portly figure; his hand- some face and flowing hair ; his college course in the class-room and especially in the chapel, in which, standing in the shadow of the tomb of his titled ancestor, he was wont to pour the streams of his youthful eloquence into ravished ears; his large family connections, so important to a rising politician, and so convenient to fall back upon in case of defeat; the high honors which, from his entrance on the stage in his twenty-third year, had been showered upon him by the people and by the Assembly; the eclät which he had elicited by his forensic exertions, and by the imposing part which he had borne in the deliberations of the Convention at Philadelphia ; his liberal acquaintance with English literature ; his stately periods, fashioned in imitation of that cele- brated orator who, in the earlier part of the century, had sought to conceal, under the forms of exquisite drapery, the tenets of a dangerous philosophy, and set off by a voice finely modulated, the tones of which rolled grandly through the hall and were re- verberated from the gallery, constituted some of the titles to the distinction universally accorded him of being the most accom- plished statesman of his age in the Commonwealth. An inci- dent which occurred in his early life, and which could not be recalled by him at any time without painful emotions, tended
" This speech, imperfect as it is reported, will give the reader some notion of the topics of the speakers; but he must supply from his imagination the influence which the voice, the action, and the character of Henry, imparted to everything he said. Mr. Madison, in his latter days, told Governor Coles that when he had made a most conclusive argument in favor of the Constitution, Henry would rise to reply to him, and by some significant action, such as a pause, a shake of the head, or a striking gesture, before he uttered a word, would undo all that Madison had been trying to do for an hour before.
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ultimately to his advantage. His father, who had been at the beginning of the Revolution Attorney General of the Colony, had adhered to the standard of England. The son, undaunted by the conduct of his father, who is said to have disinherited him for refusing to follow his example, and impelled by that spirit of chivalry which has ever been the heir-loom of his race, hastened to the army then encamped on the heights of Boston, that he might win an escutcheon of his own, undebased by the act of his sire.99 On his return to Virginia the most flattering honors awaited him-honors the more valuable from the preju- dices which distrusted the shoulders of youth. He was returned to the Convention of May, 1776, by the city of Williamsburg which had ever selected the ablest men of the Colony as its rep- resentatives. In that Convention he was placed on the commit- tee which reported the resolution instructing the delegates of Virginia in Congress to propose independence, the Declaration of Rights, and a plan of government. He was elected by the body Attorney-General of the new Commonwealth-an honor which his grandfather, his uncle, and his father, in the meridian of their fame, had been proud to possess. Three years later he was elected by the General Assembly a member of Congress, and was successively re-elected for the usual term. In 1786 he was deputed one of the seven members dispatched from Virginia to the meeting of Annapolis; and in 1787 he was sent to the Gen- eral Convention which framed the Federal Constitution. He was now Governor of the Commonwealth.
But with all his advantages, he was involved at this critical juncture in one of those distressing dilemmas into which impul- sive politicians are prone to fall, and which tend to unnerve the strongest minds. The title of renegade, however falsely ap- plied, is apt to blast the fairest flowers of rhetoric, and to impair or render unavailing the greatest powers of logic ; and by this title he well knew he was regarded in the estimation of a large and influential number of the members whom he was now to address. In the Philadelphia Convention he had exerted great influence in giving to the Constitution its main outline ; but, differing on
99 He passed through Philadelphia on his way to Boston, and was strongly commended to Washington by a remarkable letter, for a copy of which I am indebted to Mr. Connarroe, of the former city.
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some important points from his three colleagues, who had ap- proved that instrument, he, sustained by Mason and Gerry alone, declined to vote in its favor. Nor did his opposition to the new scheme halt at this stage of the proceeding. In a let- ter which he addressed to the Speaker of the House of Dele- gates,100 which was designed for publication, and which was pub- lished far and wide, he expressed his opinions at length, and led the opponents of the Constitution to believe that they would receive the aid of his talents and those of his family connection in their favorite plan of withholding the assent of Virginia to its ratification until certain amendments, designed to remedy the defects enumerated by him, should become an integral part of the new system. The change of his views, which, though it took place some time previous to the meeting of the Conven- tion, was not universally known until that body assembled, and was received at a time when the public excitement was intense, and when a single vote, or the influence of a single name, might decide the great question at issue, by his former opponents with warm approbation, and by his former friends with indignant scorn. How far he was justified in the course which he pursued, will be discussed elsewhere, our present purpose being only to explain the relation in which he stood when he rose to address the House. 101
Conscious of the delicacy of his position, and not indisposed to throw off a weight that pressed heavily upon him ; or, per- haps, willing to deprive his opponents of the benefit likely to accrue to them from that formal and fearful arraignment which
100 Elliot's Debates, I, 482.
101 The letter which he prepared for the Assembly in the winter of 1787-'88, but which he did not transmit, and which was afterwards pub- lished, was the first conclusive indication that he would vote for the ratification of the Constitution with or without amendments. The letter may be found in Carey's Museum, III, 61. Madison, writing to Jefferson as late as April 22, 1788, forty days before the meeting of the present Convention, and in intimate correspondence with Randolph, reports Randolph as "so temperate in his opposition, and goes so far with the friends of the Constitution. that he cannot be properly classed with its enemies." If Madison could not speak confidently on the sub- ject, no other person well could.
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he knew would, sooner or later, inevitably follow, he resolved to introduce the unpleasant topic at once. After a graceful allusion to the philosophy of the passions which were apt to rage most fiercely on those occasions which required the calmest delibera- tion, but excepting the members of the Convention from such an influence, he continued : " Pardon me, sir, if I am particularly sanguine in my expectations from the chair ; it well knows what is order, how to command obedience,102 and that political opinions may be as honest on one side as the other. Before I pass into the body of the argument, I must take the liberty of mentioning the part I have already borne in this great question; but let me not here be misunderstood. I come not to apologize to any mem- ber within these walls, to the Convention as a body, or even to my fellow citizens at large. Having obeyed the impulse of duty ; having satisfied my conscience, and, I trust, my God, I shall appeal to no other tribunal; nor do I become a candidate for popularity ; my manner of life has never yet betrayed such a desire. The highest honors and emoluments of the Common- wealth are a poor compensation for the surrender of personal independence. The history of England from the revolution (of 1688), and that of Virginia for more than twenty years past, show the vanity of a hope that general favor should ever follow the man, who without partiality or prejudice praises or disap- proves the opinions of friends or of foes ; nay, I might enlarge the field, and declare, from the great volume of human nature itself, that to be moderate in politics forbids an ascent to the summit of political fame. But I come hither regardless of allurements, to continue as I have begun, to repeat my earnest endeavors for a firm, energetic government, to enforce my objec- tions to the Constitution, and to concur in any practical scheme of amendments; but I will never assent to any scheme that will operate a dissolution of the Union, or any measure which may lead to it. This conduct may probably be uphanded as injurious to my own views ; if it be so, it is at least the natural offspring of my judgment. I refused to sign, and if the same were to
102 This very pointed intimation to Wythe to keep the discussion from wandering from the sections under debate, shows very plainly the pro- gramme of the Federalists. If such was their policy in committee of the whole, we can well judge what they designed it to be in the House.
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return, again would I refuse. Wholly to adopt or wholly to reject, as proposed by the Convention, seemed too hard an alternative to the citizens of America, whose servants we were, and whose pretensions amply to discuss the means of their hap- piness were undeniable. Even if adopted under the tenor of impending anarchy, the government must have been without that safest bulwark, the hearts of the people; and if rejected because the chance of amendments was cut off, the Union would have been irredeemably lost. This seems to have been verified by the event in Massachusetts ; but our Assembly have removed these inconveniences by propounding the Constitution to our full and free inquiry. When I withheld my supscription, I had not even the glimpse of the genius of America relative to the principles of the new Constitution. Who, arguing from the preceding history of Virginia, could have divined that she was prepared for the important change? In former times, indeed, she transcended every Colony in professions and practices of loyalty ; but she opened a perilous war under a democracy almost as pure as representation would admit. She supported it under a Constitution which subjects all rule, authority, and power to the legislature. Every attempt to alter it had been baffled ; the increase of Congressional power had always excited alarm. I therefore would not bind myself to uphold the new Constitution before I had tried it by the true touchstone ; especially, too, when I foresaw that even the members of the General Conven- tion might be instructed by the comments of those without doors. But, moreover, I had objections to the Constitution, the most material of which, too lengthy in detail, I have as yet barely stated to the public, but will explain when we arrive at the proper points. Amendments were consequently my wish ; these were the grounds of my repugnance to subscribe, and were perfectly reconcilable with my unalterable resolution to be regulated by the spirit of America, if after our best efforts for amendments, they could not be removed. I freely indulge those who may think this declaration too candid in believing that I hereby de- part from the concealment belonging to the character of a states- man. Their censure would be more reasonable were it not for an unquestionable fact, that the spirit of America depends upon a combination of circumstances which no individual can control, and arises not from the prospect of advantages which may be
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gained by the acts of negotiation, but from deeper and more honest causes. As with me the only question has ever been between previous and subsequent amendments, so I will express my apprehensions, that the postponement of this Convention to so late a day has extinguished the probability of the former with- out inevitable ruin to the Union ; and the Union is the anchor of our political salvation ; and I will assent to the lopping of this limb (meaning his arm) before I assent to the dissolution of the Union." Then, turning to Henry, he said : "I shall now follow the honorable gentleman in his inquiry. Before the meeting of the Federal Convention," says the honorable gentleman, "we rested in peace. A miracle it was that we were so ; miraculous must it appear to those who consider the distresses of the war, and the no less afflicting calamities which we suffered in the suc- ceeding peace. Be so good as to recollect how we fared under the Confederation. I am ready to pour forth sentiments of the fullest gratitude to those gentlemen who framed that system. I believe they had the most enlightened heads in this western hemisphere. Notwithstanding their intelligence and earnest solicitude for the good of their country, this system has proved totally inadequate to the purpose for which it was devised ; but, sir, it was no disgrace to them. The subject of confederations was then new, and the necessity of speedily forming some gov- ernment for the States to defend them against the passing dan- gers prevented, perhaps, those able statesmen from making the system as perfect as more leisure and deliberation would have enabled them to do. I cannot otherwise conceive how they would have formed a system that provided no means of enforcing the powers which were nominally given to it. Was it not a political farce to pretend to vest powers without accompanying them with the means of putting them into execution.103 This
103 The wonder is, not as Mr. Randolph thinks, that the Congress made such a confederation, but that they succeeded in making any confederation at all. Among other evidences in my possession of the difficulties which environed the subject, I quote the annexed extract from a letter of Edward Rutledge, a member of Congress, which I received from an esteemed friend at the North, dated August, 1776, and which will show that the work was nearly given up in despair : " We have nothing with the confederation for some days, and it is of little consequence if we never see again ; for we have made such a
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want of energy was not a greater solecism than the blending together and vesting in one body all the branches of govern- ment. The utter inefficacy of this system was discovered the moment the danger was over by the introduction of peace. The accumulated public misfortunes that resulted from its inefficacy rendered an alteration necessary. This necessity was obvious to all America. Attempts have accordingly been made for this pur- pose. I have been a witness to this business from its earliest beginning. I was honored with a seat in the small Convention held at Annapolis. The members of that Convention thought unanimously that the control of commerce should be given to Congress and recommended to their States to extend the im- provement to the whole system. The members of the General Convention were particularly deputed to meliorate the Confed- eration. On a thorough contemplation of the subject, they found it impossible to amend that system : what was to be done ? The dangers of America, which will be shown at another time by particular enumeration, suggested the expedient of forming a new plan. The Confederation has done a great deal for us we all allow; but it was the danger of a powerful enemy, and the spirit of America, sir, and not any energy in that system, that carried us through that perilous war; for what were its best aims? The greatest exertions were made when the danger was most imminent. This system was not signed till March, 1781, Maryland not having acceded to it before ; yet the military achievements and other exertions of America, previous to that period, were as brilliant, effectual, and successful as they could have been under the most energetic government. This clearly shows that our perilous situation was the cement of our Union. How different the scene when this peril vanished and peace was restored ! The demands of Congress were treated with neglect. One State complained that another had not completed its quotas as well as itself; public credit gone, for, I believe, were it not for the private credit of individuals, we should have been ruined
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