Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/232

206, June 19.

In Committee of the Whole, on the propositions of Mr. Patterson. The substitute offered yesterday by Mr. Dickinson being rejected by a vote now taken on it,—

Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, ay, 4; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, no, 6; Maryland, divided.

Mr. Patterson's plan was again at large before the committee.

Mr. MADISON. Much stress has been laid by some gentlemen on the want of power in the Convention to propose any other than a federal plan. To what had been answered by others, he would only add, that neither of the characteristics attached to a federal plan would support this objection. One characteristic was, that, in a federal government, the power was exercised not on the people individually, but on the people collectively, on the states. Yet in some instances, as in piracies, captures, &.c., the existing Confederacy and in many instances the amendments to it proposed by Mr. Patterson, must operate immediately on individuals. The other characteristic was, that a federal government derived its appointments not immediately from the people, but from the states which they respectively composed. Here, too, were facts on the other side in two of the states, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the delegates to Congress were chosen, not by the legislatures, but by the people at large; and the plan of Mr. Patterson intended no change in this particular.

It had been alleged, (by Mr. Patterson,) that the Confederation, having been formed by unanimous consent, could be dissolved by unanimous consent only. Does this doctrine result from the nature of compacts? Does it arise from any particular stipulation in the Articles of Confederation? If we consider the Federal Union as analogous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose one society, and which must, in its theoretic origin at least, have been the unanimous act of the component members, it cannot be said that no dissolution of the compact can be effected without unanimous consent, A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact, by a part of the society, would certainly absolve the other part from their obligations to it. If the breach of any article, by any of the parties, does not set the others at liberty, it is because the contrary is implied in the compact itself, and particularly by that law of it which gives an indefinite authority to the majority to bind the whole, in all cases. This latter circumstance shows, that we are not to consider the Federal Union as analogous to the social compact of individuals: for, if it were so, a majority would have a right to bind