Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/146

120 as by Massachusetts; by compacts without the consent of Congress, as between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and between Virginia and Maryland. From the legislative Journals of Virginia, it appears, that a vote refusing to apply for a sanction of Congress was followed by a vote against the communication of the compact to Congress. In the internal administration of the states, a violation of contracts had become familiar, in the form of depreciated paper made a legal tender, of property substituted for money, of instalment laws, and of the occlusions of the courts of justice, although evident that all such interferences affected the rights of other states, relatively creditors, as well as citizens creditors within the state. Among the defects which had been severely felt, was want of a uniformity in cases requiring it, as laws of naturalization and bankruptcy; a coercive authority operating on individuals; and a guaranty of the internal tranquillity of the states.

As a natural consequence of this distracted and disheartening condition of the Union, the federal authority had ceased to be respected abroad, and dispositions were shown there, particularly in Great Britain, to take advantage of its imbecility, and to speculate on its approaching downfall. At home, it had lost all confidence and credit; the unstable and unjust career of the states had also forfeited the respect and confidence essential to order and good government, involving a general decay of confidence and credit between man and man. It was found, moreover, that those least partial to popular government, or most distrustful of its efficacy, were yielding to anticipations, that, from an increase of the confusion, a government might result more congenial with their taste or their opinions; whilst those most devoted to the principles and forms of republics were alarmed for the cause of liberty itself, at stake in the American experiment, and anxious for a system that would avoid the inefficacy of a mere Confederacy, without passing into the opposite extreme of a consolidated government. It was known that there were individuals who had betrayed a bias towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a partition of the Union into several confederacies, either from a better chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would require stronger governments, or, by their hostile conflicts, lead to a monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made its appearance in the newspapers.

Such were the defects, the deformities, the diseases, and the ominous prospects, for which the Convention were to provide a remedy, and which ought never to be overlooked in expounding and appreciating the constitutional charter, the remedy that was provided.$75$

As a sketch on paper, the earliest, perhaps, of a constitutional government for the Union, (organized into regular departments, with physical means operating on individuals,) to be sanctioned by the people of the states, acting in their original and sovereign character, was contained in the hitters of James Madison to Thomas