Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/660

644 superiority to her friends of South Carolina and the respectable state of Massachusetts, who, to prevent a dissolution of the Union, adopted the Constitution, and proposed such amendments as they thought necessary, placing confidence in the other states, that they would accede to them?

After making several other remarks, he concluded by declaring that, in his opinion, they were about to determine whether we should be one of the United States or not.

Mr. ZACHARIAH JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, I am now called upon to decide the greatest of all questions—a question which may involve the felicity or misery of myself and posterity. I have hitherto listened attentively to the arguments adduced by both sides, and attended to hear the discussion of the most complicated parts of the system by gentlemen of great abilities. Having now come to the ultimate stage of the investigation, I think it my duty to declare my sentiments on the subject. When I view the necessity of government among mankind, and its happy operation when judiciously constructed; and when I view the principles of this Constitution, and the satisfactory and liberal manner in which they have been developed by the gentleman in the chair, and several other gentlemen; and when I view, on the other hand, the strained construction which has been put, by the gentlemen on the other side, on every word and syllable, in endeavoring to prove oppressions which can never possibly happen,—my judgment is convinced of the safety and propriety of this system. This conviction has not arisen from a blind acquiescence or dependence on the assertions and opinions of others, but from a full persuasion of its rectitude, after an attentive and mature consideration of the subject; the arguments of other gentlemen having only confirmed the opinion which I had previously formed, and which I was determined to abandon, should I find it to be ill founded.

As to the principle of representation, I find it attended to in this government in the fullest manner. It is founded on absolute equality. When I see the power of electing the representatives—the principal branch—in the people at large—in those very persons who are the constituents of the state legislatures; when I find that the other branch is chosen by the state legislature; that the executive is eligible in a secondary degree by the people likewise, and that the