Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/200

 consistent with the enjoyment and preservation of liberty—that the genius and habits of the people of America were opposed to such a government. That during their connexion with Great Britain, they had been accustomed to have all their concerns transacted within a narrow circle, their colonial district; they had been accustomed to have their seats of government near them, to which they might have access, without much inconvenience, when their business should require it—That, at this time, we find, if a county is rather large, the people complain of the inconvenience, and clamor for a division of their county, or for a removal of the place where their courts are held, so as to render it more central and convenient. That in those States, the territory of which is extensive, as soon as the population increases remote from the seat of government, the inhabitants are urgent for the removal of the seat of their government, or to be erected into a new State. As a proof of this, the inhabitants of the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina, of Vermont and the province of Maine, were instances; even the inhabitants of the western parts of Pennsylvania, who, it is said, already seriously look forward to the time when they shall either be erected into a new State, or have their seat of government removed to the Susquehanna. If the inhabitants of the different States consider it as a grievance to attend a county court, or the seat of their own government, when a little inconvenient, can it be supposed they would ever submit to have a national government established, the seat of which would be more than a thousand miles removed from some of them?

[] It was insisted, that governments of a republican nature are those best calculated to preserve the freedom and happiness of the citizen; that governments of this kind are only calculated for a territory but small in its extent; that the only method by which an extensive continent like America could be connected and united together, consistent with the principles of freedom, must be by having a number of strong and energetic State governments for securing and protecting the rights of individuals forming those governments, and for regulating all their concerns; and a strong, energetic federal government over those States, for the protection and preservation, and for regulating the common concerns of the State. It was further insisted, that, even if it was possible to effect a total abolition of the State governments at this time, and to establish one general government over the people of America, it could not long subsist, but in a little time would again be broken into a variety of governments of a smaller extent, similar, in some manner, to the present situation of this continent; the principal difference, in all