Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/382

362 extinction and abolition of all state governments. Nor will this, I believe, be doubted by any person, when I inform you that some of the warm advocates and patrons of the system in Convention strenuously opposed the choice of the senators by the state legislatures, insisting that the state governments ought not to be introduced in any manner so as to be component parts of, or instruments for carrying into execution, the general government. Nay, so far were the friends of the system from pretending that they meant it or considered it as a federal system, that, on the question being proposed, "that a union of the states, merely federal, ought to be the sole objects of the exercise of the powers vested in the Convention," it was negatived by a majority of the members; and it was resolved, "that a national government ought to be formed." Afterwards, the word "national" was struck out by them, because they thought the word might tend to alarm; and although, now, they who advocate the system pretend to call themselves federalists, in Convention the distinction was quite the reverse; those who opposed the system were there considered and styled the federal party, those who advocated it the anti-federal.

Viewing it as a national, not a federal government,—as calculated and designed, not to protect and preserve, but to abolish and annihilate, the state governments,—it was opposed for the following reasons: It was said that this continent was much too extensive for one national government, which should have sufficient power and energy to pervade, and hold in obedience and subjection, all its parts, consistently with the enjoyment and preservation of liberty—that the genius and habits of the people of America were opposed to such a government—that, during their connection with Great Britain, they had been accustomed to have all their concerns transacted within a narrow circle, their colonial district; they had been accustomed to have their seats of government near them, to which they might have access, without much inconvenience, when their business should require it—that, at this time, we find, if a county is rather large, the people complain of the inconvenience, and clamor for a division of their county, or for a removal of the place where their courts are held, so as to render it more central and convenient—that, in those states the territory of which is extensive, as soon as the population increases remote from the seat of government, the inhabitants are urgent for a removal of the seat of their government, or to be erected into a new state. As a proof of this, the inhabitants of the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina, of Vermont and the Province of Maine, were instances; even the inhabitants of the western parts of Pennsylvania, who, it is said, already seriously look forward to the time when they shall either be erected into a new state, or have their seat of government removed to the Susquehannah. If the inhabitants of the different states consider it as a grievance to attend a county court, or the seat of their own government, when a little inconvenient, can it be supposed they would ever submit to have a national government established, the seat of which would be more than a thousand miles removed from some of them? It was insisted that governments of a republican nature are those best calculated to preserve the freedom and happiness of the citizen—that governments of this kind are only calculated for a territory but small in its extent—that the only method by which an extensive continent, like America, could be connected and united together, consistently with the principles of freedom, must be by having a number of strong and energetic state governments, for securing and protecting the rights of individuals forming those