Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/621

.] urged by my feelings, have forborne to say any thing on my part, from a satisfactory impression of the inferiority of my talents, and from a wish to acquire every information which might assist my judgment in forming a decision on a question of such magnitude. But, sir, as it involves in its fate the interest of so extensive a country, every sentiment which can be offered deserves its proportion of public attention. I shall therefore avoid any apology for now rising, although uncommon propriety might justify it, and rather trust to the candor of those who hear me. Indeed, I am induced to come forward, not from any apprehension that my opinion will have weight, but in order to discharge that duty which I owe to myself, and to those I have the honor to represent.

The defects of the articles by which we are at present confederated have been echoed and reëchoed, not only from every quarter of this house, but from every part of the continent. At the framing of those articles, a common interest excited us to unite for the common good. But no sooner did this principle cease to operate, than the defects of the system were sensibly felt. Since then, the seeds of civil dissension have been gradually opening, and political confusion has pervaded the states. During the short time of my political life, having been fully impressed with the truth of these observations, when a proposition was made by Virginia to invite the sister states to a general convention, at Philadelphia, to amend these defects, I readily gave my assent; and when I considered the very respectable characters who formed that body,—when I reflected that they were, most of them, those sages and patriots under whose banners, and by whose counsels, we had been rescued from impending danger, and placed among the nations of the earth,—when I also turned my attention to that illustrious character, to immortalize whose memory Fame shall blow her trump to the latest ages,—I say, when I weighed all these considerations, I was almost persuaded to declare in favor of the proposed plan, and to exert my slender abilities in its favor. But when I came to investigate it impartially, on the immutable principles of government, and to exercise that reason with which the God of nature hath endowed me, and which I will ever freely use, I was convinced of this important, though melancholy truth,—that the greatest men may err, and that