Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/288

 citizens, is the true state of the conduct I pursued when I took my seat in Convention, and which the Landholder, to whom falsehood appears more familiar than truth, with his usual affrontery, has misrepresented by a positive declaration, that without obtaining or endeavoring to obtain any information on the subject, I hastily and insolently obtruded my sentiments on the Convention, and to the astonishment of every member present, on the very day I took my seat, began a speech, which continued two days, in opposition to those measures which, on mature deliberation, had been adopted by the Convention. But I ‘alone advocated the political heresy, that the people ought not to be trusted with the election of representatives.’ On this subject, as I would wish to be on every other, my fellow citizens, I have been perfectly explicit in the information I gave to the House of Delegates, and which has since been published. In a state government, I consider all power flowing immediately from the people in their individual capacity, and that the people, in their individual capacity, have, and ought to have the right of choosing delegates in a state legislature, the business of which is to make laws, regulating their concerns, as individuals, and operating upon them as such; but in a federal government, formed over free states, the power flows from the people, and the right of choosing delegates belongs to them only mediately through their respective state governments which are the members composing the federal government, and from whom all its power immediately proceeds; to which state governments, the choice of the federal delegates immediately belongs. I should blush indeed for my ignorance of the first elements of government, was I to entertain different sentiments on the subject; and if this is ‘political heresy,’ I have no ambition to be ranked with those who are orthodox. …As to the ‘jargon’ attributed to me of maintaining that notwithstanding each state had an equal number of votes in the senate, yet the states were unequally represented in the senate,’ the Landholder has all the merit of its absurdity; nor can I conceive what sentiment it is that I ever have expressed, to which he, with his usual perversion and misrepresentation, could give such a colouring. That I ever suggested the idea of letting loose an army indiscriminately on the innocent and guilty, in a state refusing to comply with the requisitions of Congress, or that such an idea ever had place in my mind, is a falsehood so groundless, so base and malignant, that it could only have originated or been devised by a heart which would dishonour the midnight assassin. My sentiments on this subject are well known; it was only in the case where a state refused to comply with the requisitions of Congress, that I was willing to