Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/601

.] any objection to this clause before, and have not employed a thought on the subject.

Mr. GEORGE MASON. Mr. Chairman, on some former part of the investigation of this subject, gentlemen were pleased to make some observations on the security of property coming within this section. It was then said, and I now say, that there is no security; nor have gentlemen convinced me of this.

Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Chairman: it appears to me, sir, under this section, there never can be a southern state admitted into the Union. There are seven states, which are a majority, and whose interest it is to prevent it. The balance being actually in their possession, they will have the regulation of commerce, and the federal ten miles square wherever they please. It is not to be supposed, then, that they will admit any southern state into the Union, so as to lose that majority.

Mr. MADISON replied, that he thought this part of the plan more favorable to the Southern States than the present Confederation, as there was a greater chance of new states being admitted.

Mr. GEORGE MASON took a retrospective view of several parts which had been before objected to. He endeavored to demonstrate the dangers that must inevitably arise from the insecurity of our rights and privileges, as they depended on vague, indefinite, and ambiguous implications The adoption of a system so replete with defects, he apprehended, could not but be productive of the most alarming consequences. He dreaded popular resistance to its operation. He Expressed, in emphatic terms, the dreadful effects which must ensue, should the people resist; and concluded by observing, that he trusted gentlemen would pause before they would decide a question which involved such awful consequences.

Mr. LEE, (of Westmoreland.) Mr. Chairman, my feelings are so oppressed with the declarations of my honorable friend, that I can no longer suppress my utterance. I respect the honorable gentleman, and never believed I should live to have heard fall from his lips opinions so injurious to our country, and so opposite to the dignity of this assembly 74