Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/380

360 our system—that we had not been sent to form a government over the inhabitants of America, considered as individuals—that, as individuals, they were all subject to their respective state governments, which governments would still remain though the federal government should be dissolved—that the system of government we were intrusted to prepare was a government over these thirteen states; but that, in our proceedings, we adopted principles which would be right and proper only on the supposition that there were no state governments at all, but that all the inhabitants of this extensive continent were, in their individual capacity, without government, and in a state of nature—that, accordingly, the system proposes the legislature to consist of two branches, the one to be drawn from the people at large, immediately, in their individual capacity; the other to be chosen in a more select manner, as a check upon the first. It is, in its very introduction, declared to be a compact between the people of the United States as individuals; and it is to be ratified by the people at large, in their capacity as individuals; all which, it was said, would be quite right and proper, if there were no state governments, if all the people of this continent were in a state of nature, and we were forming one national government for them as individuals; and is nearly the same as was done in most of the states, when they formed their governments over the people who composed them.

Whereas it was urged, that the principles on which a federal government over states ought to be constructed and ratified are the reverse; and, instead of the legislature consisting of two branches, one branch was sufficient, whether examined by the dictates of reason or the experience of ages—that the representation, instead of being drawn from the people at large, as individuals, ought to be drawn from the states, as states, in their sovereign capacity—that, in a federal government, the parties to the compact are not the people, as individuals, but the states, as states; and that it is by the states, as states, in their sovereign capacity, that the system of government ought to be ratified, and not by the people, as individuals.

It was further said, that, in a federal government over states equally free, sovereign, and independent, every state ought to have an equal share in making the federal laws or regulations, in deciding upon them, and in carrying them into execution, neither of which was the case in this system, but the reverse, the states not having an equal voice in the legislature, nor in the appointment of the executive, the judges, and the other officers of government. It was insisted, that in the whole system there was but one federal feature—the appointment of the senators by the states in their sovereign capacity, that is, by their legislatures, and the equality of suffrage in that branch; but it was said that this feature was only federal in appearance.

To prove this,—and that the Senate, as constituted, could not be a security for the protection and preservation of the state governments, and that the senators could not be considered the representatives of the states, as states,—it was observed that, upon just principles, the representative ought to speak the sentiments of his constituents, and ought to vote in the same manner that his constituents would do, (as far as he can judge,) provided his constituents were acting in person, and had the same knowledge and information with himself: and therefore that the representative ought to be dependent on his constituents, and answerable to them; that the connection between the representatives and the represented ought to be as