Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/201

Rh tant in its political as in its commercial bearings. At the same time it was proposed to connect the Potomac and Delaware rivers with a canal, and a company was organized for this purpose. This made it desirable that the four states — Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Peimsylvania — should agree upon the laws for regulating interstate traf- fic through this system of water-ways. But from this it was but a short step to the conclusion that, since the whole commercial system of the United States confessedly needed overhauling, it might perhaps be as well for all the thirteen states to hold a convention for considering the matter. When such a suggestion was communicated from the legislature of Maryland to that of Virginia, it afforded Mr. Madison the opportunity for which he had been eagerly waiting. Some time before he had prepared a resolution for the appointment of commissioners to confer with commissioners from the other states concerning the trade of the country and the advisableness of intrusting its regulation to the Federal government. This reso- lution Mr. Madison left to be offered to the assem- bly by some one less conspicuously identified with federalist opinions than himself ; and it was ac- cordingly presented by Mr. Tyler, father of the future president of that name. The motion was unfavorably received and was laid upon the table, but when the message came from Maryland the matter was reconsidered and the resolution passed. Annapolis was selected as the place for the con- vention, which assembled on 11 Sept., 1786. Only five states — Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York — were repi'esented at the meeting. Maryland, which had first suggested the convention, had seen the appointed time arrive without even taking the trouble to select commis- sioners. As the representation was so inadequate, the convention thought it best to defer action, and accordingly adjourned after adopting an address to the states, which was prepared by Alexander Hamilton. The address incorporated a suggestion from New Jersey, which indefinitely enlarged the business to be treated by such a convention ; it was to deal not only with the regulation of com- merce, but with " other important matters." Act- ing upon this cautious hint, the address recom- mended the calling of a second convention, to be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday of May, 1787. Mr. Madison was one of the commis- sioners at Annapolis, and was very soon appointed a delegate to the new convention, along with Washington, Randolph, Mason, and others. The avowed purpose of the new convention was to " de- vise such provisions as shall appear necessary to render the constitution of the Federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and to report to congress such an act as, when agreed to by them and confirmed by the legislatures of every state, would effectually provide for the same." The report of the Annapolis commissioners was brought before congress in October, in the hope that con- gress would eai-nestly recommend to the several states the course of action therein suggested. At first the objections to the plan prevailed in con- gress, but the events of the winter went far toward persuading men in all parts of the country that the only hope of escaping anarchy lay in a thor- ough revision of the imperfect scheme of govern- ment under which we were then living. The pa- per-money craze in so many of the states, the vio- lent proceedings in the Rhode Island legislature, the riots in Vermont and New Hampshire, the Shays rebellion in Massachusetts, the dispute with Spain about the navigation of the Mississippi, and the consequent imminent danger of separation be- tween north and south, had all come together ; and now the last ounce was laid upon the camel's back in the failure of the impost amendment. In February, 1787, just as Mr. Madison, who had been chosen a delegate to congress, arrived in New York, the legislature of that state refused its assent to the amendment, which was thus defeated. Thus, only three months before the time designated for the" meeting of the Philadelphia convention, con- gress was decisively informed that it would not be allowed to take any effectual measures for raising a revenue. This accumulation of difficulties made congress more ready to listen to the arguments of Mr. Madison, and presently congress itself proposed a convention at Philadelphia identical with the one recommended by the Annapolis commissioners, and thus in its own way sanctioned their action.

The assembling of the convention at Philadel- phia was an event to which Mr. ]Iadison, by persist- ent energy and skill, had contributed more than any other man in the country, with the possible exception of Alexander Hainilton. For the noble political structure reared by the convention, it was Madison that furnished the basis. Before the con- vention met he laid before his colleagues of the Virginia delegation the outlines of the scheme that was presented to the convention as the " Virginia plan." Of the delegates, Edmund Randolph was then governor of Virginia, and it was he that pre- sented the plan, and made the opening speech in defence of it, but its chief author was Madison. This " Virginia plan " struck directly at the root of the evils from which our Federal government had suffered under the articles of confederation. The weakness of that government had consisted in the fact that it operated only upon states and not upon individuals. Only states, not individuals, were represented in the Continental congress, which accordingly resembled a European congress rather than an English parliament. The delegates to the Continental congress were more like envoys from sovereign states than like members of a legis- lative body. They might deliberate and advise, but had no means of enforcing their will upon the sev- eral state governments ; and hence they could neither raise a revenue nor preserve order. In forming the new government, this fundamental difficulty was met first by the creation of a legis- lative body representing population instead of states, and secondly by the creation of a Federal executive and a Federal judiciary. Thus arose that peculiar state of things so familiar to Ameri- cans, but so strange to Europeans that they find it hard to comprehend it : the state of things in which every individual lives under two complete and well-rounded systems of laws — the state law and the Federal law — each with its legislature, its executive, and its judiciary, moving one within the other. It was one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world, and the credit of it is due to jMadison more than to any other one man. To him we chiefiy owe the luminous conception of the two coexisting and harmonious spheres of government, although the constitution, as actually framed, was the result of skilful compromises by which the Virginia plan was modified and improved in many important points. In its original sliape that plan went further toward national consolidation than the constitution as adopted. It contemplated a national legislature to be composed of two houses, but both the upper and the lower house were to represent population instead of states. Here it encountered fierce opposition from the smaller states, under the lead of