Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/186

172 choſen ſpecial conventions to form and fix their governments. The individuals then who maintain the contrary opinion in this country, ſhould have the modeſty to ſuppoſe it poſſible that they may be wrong and the reſt of America right. But if there be only a poſſibility of their being wrong, if only a plauſible doubt remains of the validity of the ordinance of government, is it not better to remove that doubt, by placing it on a bottom which none will diſpute? If they be right we ſhall only have the unneceſſary trouble of meeting once in convention. If they be wrong, they expoſe us to the hazard of having no fundamental rights at all. True it is, this is no time for deliberating on forms of government. While an enemy is within our bowels, the firſt object is to expell him. But when this ſhall be done, when peace ſhall be eſtabliſhed, and leiſure given us for intrenching within good forms the rights for which we have bled, let no man be found indolent enough to decline a little more trouble for placing them beyond the reach of queſtion. If any thing more be requiſite to produce a conviction of the expediency of calling a convention at a proper ſeaſon to fix our form of government, let it be the reflection,

6. That the aſſembly exerciſes a power of determining a quorum of their own body which may legiſlate for us. After the eſtabliſhment of the new form they adhere to the Lex majoris partis, founded in common law as well as common right. It is the natural law of every aſſembly of