Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/414

 the qualification, a president during good behaviour, or for a competent period, subject to impeachment, with an ineligibility forever thereafter.

“My reasons,” he said, “were, an exclusion, as far as possible, of the influence of executive patronage in the choice of a chief magistrate, and a desire to avoid the incalculable mischief which must result from the too frequent elections of that officer.” In conclusion, he made the following prophetic observation: “You nor I, my friend, may not live to see the day, but most assuredly it will come, when every vital interest of the state will be merged in the all-absorbing question of who shall be the next ?”

ⅭⅭⅭⅩ.

“The representatives from the different states having met on the 25th of May, 1787, at the state-house in Philadelphia, General Washington having been unanimously placed in the chair, and Major Jackson, by the votes of all the states, except Pennsylvania, appointed secretary; the convention proceeded to read the powers given by the different states to their delegates, among which were particularly noticed the power of Delaware, which restrained its delegates from assenting to an abolition of the fifth article of the confederation, by which it is declared ‘that each state shall have one vote.’

“The 28th, his excellency Governour Randolph, a member from Virginia, got up, and in a long and elaborate speech, showed the defects existing in the federal government then in existence, as totally inadequate to the peace, safety, and security of the confederacy, and the absolute necessity of a more energetick government.

“He closed these remarks with a set of resolutions, fifteen in number, which he proposed to the convention for their adoption, and as leading principles whereon to form a new government. He candidly confessed, they were not calculated for a federal government. He meant a strong consolidated union, in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated.