Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/349

.] Another learned and honorable gentleman on my left hand said, we must look up to it as the rock of our salvation. To make short, sir, necessitas non habet legem was the word.

Those gentlemen, Mr. President, and some others, members of this respectable Convention,—whose profound oratory and elocution would, on the journals of a British House of Commons, stand as lasting monuments of their great abilities,—a man of my circumscribed scale of talents is not adequate to the task of contending with; nor have I a turn for embellishing my language, or bedecking it with all the flowers of rhetoric. In a word, Mr. President, my idea of the matter now under our consideration is, that we very much stand in need of a reform of government, as the very sinews of our present constitution are relaxed. But, sir, I would fondly hope that our case is not so bad as represented. Are we invaded by a foreign enemy? Or are the bowels of our country torn to pieces by insurrections and intestine broils? I answer. No.

Sir, admit but this, and then allow me to ask if history furnishes us with a single instance of any nation, state, or people, who had it more in their power than we at present have to frame for ourselves a perfect, permanent, free, and happy constitution. The Constitution, sir, now under consideration, was framed (I shall say) by the wisdom of a General Convention of the United States; it now lies before us to wait our concurrence or disapprobation. We, sir, as citizens and freemen, have an undoubted right of judging for ourselves; it therefore behooves us most seriously to consider, before we determine a matter of such vast magnitude. We are not acting for ourselves alone, but, to all appearance, for generations unborn.

This section I consider as the soul of the Constitution,—as containing, in a few words, those restraints upon the states, which, while they keep them from interfering with the powers of the Union, will leave them always in a situation to comply with their federal duties—will teach them to cultivate those principles of public honor and private honesty which are the sure road to national character and happiness.