Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/290

274 wishes ought to be directed, has been neglected. But the particular disorders of Virginia ought not to be attributed to the Confederation. I was concerned to hear the local affairs of Virginia mentioned. If these make impressions on the minds of the gentlemen, why did not the Convention provide for the removing the evils of the government of Virginia? If I am right, the states, with respect to their internal affairs, are left precisely as before, except in a few instances. Of course, the judiciary, should this government be adopted, would not be improved; the state government would be in this respect nearly the same; and the Assembly may, without judge or jury,, hang as many men as they may think proper to sacrifice to the good of the public. Our judiciary has been certainly improved in some respects since the revolution. The proceedings of our courts are not, at least, as rapid as they were under the royal government.

[Here Mr. Grayson mentioned a particular cause which had been thirty-one years on the docket.]

The adoption of this government will not meliorate our own particular system. I beg leave to consider the circumstances of the Union antecedent to the meeting of the Convention at Philadelphia. We have been told of phantoms and ideal dangers to lead us into measures which will, in my opinion, be the ruin of our country. If the existence of those dangers cannot be proved, if there be no apprehension of wars, if there be no rumors of wars, it will place the subject in a different light, and plainly evince to the world that there cannot be any reason for adopting measures which we apprehend to be ruinous and destructive. When this state proposed that the general government should be improved, Massachusetts was just recovered from a rebellion which had brought the republic to the brink of destruction—from a rebellion which was crushed by that federal government which is now so much contemned and abhorred: a vote of that august body for fifteen hundred men, aided by the exertions of the state, silenced all opposition, and shortly restored the public tranquillity. Massachusetts was satisfied that these internal commotions were so happily settled, and was unwilling to risk any similar distresses by theoretic experiments. Were the Eastern States willing to enter into this measure? Were they willing to accede to the