Page:Nature and Character of our Federal Government.djvu/67

 I have endeavored to show, in the preceding part of this review, that the people of the several States, while in a colonial condition, were not "one people" in any political sense of the terms; that they did not become so by the declaration of independence, but that each State became a complete and perfect sovereignty within its own limits; that the revolutionary government, prior to the establishment of the confederation, was, emphatically, a government of the States as such, through congress, as their common agent and representative, and that, by the articles of confederation, each State expressly reserved its entire sovereignty and independence. In no one of the various conditions, through which we have hitherto traced them, do we perceive any feature of consolidation; but their character as distinct and sovereign States is always carefully and jealously preserved. We are, then, to contemplate them as sovereign States, when the first movements towards the formation of the present constitution were made.

Our author has given a correct history of the preparatory steps towards the call of a convention. It was one of those remarkable events, (of which the history of the world affords many examples,) which have exerted the most important influence upon the destiny of mankind, and yet have sprung from causes which did not originally look to any such results. It is true, the defects of the confederation, and its total inadequacy to the purposes of an effective government, were generally acknowledged; but I am not aware that any decisive step was taken in any of the States, for the formation of a better system, prior to the year 1786. In that year, the difficulties and embarrassments under which our trade suffered, in consequence of the conflicting and often hostile commercial regulations of the several States, suggested to the legislature of Virginia the necessity of forming among all the States a general system, calculated to advance and protect the trade of all of them. They accordingly appointed commissioners, to meet at Annapolis commissioners from such of the other States as should approve of the proceeding, for the purpose of preparing a uniform plan of commercial regulations, which was to be submitted to all the States, and, if by them ratified and adopted, to be executed by congress. Such of the commissioners as met,