Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/449

Rh can—to a conclave, transacting their business secret from the eye of the public. Do we not discover by their public journals of the years 1778–9 and 1780, that factions and party spirit had guided many of their acts? The people of America, like all other people, are unsettled in their minds, and their principles fixed to no object, except that a republican government is the best, and that the legislature ought to consist of two branches. The constitutions of the respective states, made and approved of by them, evince this principle. Congress, however, from other causes, received a different organization. What! would you use military force to compel the observance of a social compact? It is destructive to the rights of the people. Do you expect the militia will do it? or do you mean a standing army? The first will never, on such an occasion, exert any power; and the latter may turn its arms against the government which employs them. I never will consent to destroy state governments, and will ever be as careful to preserve the one as the other. If we should, in the formation of the latter, have omitted some necessary regulation. I will trust my posterity to amend it. That the one government will be productive of disputes and jealousies against the other, I believe; but it will produce mutual safety. I shall close with observing that, though some have expressed much warmth on this and former occasions, I can excuse it, as the result of sudden passion; and hope that, although we may differ in some particular points, if we mean the good of the whole, that our good sense, upon reflection, will prevent us from spreading our discontent farther.

Mr. MARTIN. I know the government must be supported; and if the one was incompatible with the other, I would support the state government at the expense of the Union: for I consider the present system as a system of slavery. Impressed with this idea, I made use, on a former occasion, of expressions perhaps rather harsh. If gentlemen conceive that the legislative branch is dangerous, divide them into two. They are as much the representatives of the states as the state assemblies are the representatives of the people. Are not the powers which we here exercise given by the legislatures? [After giving a detail of the revolution and of state governments. Mr. M. continued:] I confess, when the Confederation was made, Congress ought to have