Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/223

1787.] and practice both proclaim it. If the legislative authority be not restrained, there can be neither liberty nor stability; and it can only be restrained by dividing it, within itself, into distinct and independent branches. In a single House there is no check but the inadequate one of the virtue and good sense of those who compose it.

On another great point, the contrast was equally favorable to the plan reported by the Committee of the Whole. It vested the executive powers in a single magistrate. The plan of New Jersey vested them in a plurality. In order to control the legislative authority, you must divide it. In order to control the executive, you must unite it. One man will be more responsible than three. Three will contend among themselves, till one becomes the master of his colleagues. In the triumvirates of Rome, first Caesar, then Augustus, are witnesses of this truth. The kings of Sparta, and the consuls of Rome, prove also the factious consequences of dividing the executive magistracy Having already taken up so much time, he would not, he said, proceed to any of the other points. Those on which he had dwelt are sufficient of themselves; and on the decision of them the fate of the others will depend.

Mr. PINCKNEY.$112$ The whole comes to this, as he conceived. Give New Jersey an equal vote, and she will dismiss her scruples, and concur in the national system. He thought the Convention authorized to go any length, in recommending, which they found necessary to remedy the evils which produced this Convention.

Mr. ELLSWORTH proposed, as a more distinctive form of collecting the mind of the committee on the subject, "that the legislative power of the United States should remain in Congress." This was not seconded, though it seemed better calculated for the purpose than the first proposition of Mr. Patterson, in place of which Mr. Ellsworth wished to substitute it.

Mr. RANDOLPH was not scrupulous on the point of power. When the salvation of the republic was at stake, it would be treason to our trust, not to propose what we found necessary. He painted in strong colors the imbecility of the existing Confederacy, and the danger of delaying a substantial reform. In answer to the objection drawn from the sense of our constituents, as denoted by their acts relating to the Convention and the objects of their deliberation, he observed that, as each state acted separately in the case, it would have been indecent for it to have charged the existing constitution with all the vices which it might have perceived in it. The first state that set on foot this experiment would not have been justified in going so far, ignorant as it was of the opinion of others, and sensible as it must have been of the uncertainty of a successful issue to the experiment. There are reasons certainly of a peculiar nature, where the ordinary cautions must be dispensed with; and this is certainly one of them He would not, as far as depended on him, leave any thing that seemed necessary, undone. The present moment is favorable, and is probably the last that will offer.