Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/493

 that such a Constitution as the latter would have been recommended to the States by all the members of that Body whose names were subscribed to the Instrument.

Passing from this view of the sense in which the terms common defence & general welfare were used by the Framers of the Constitution, let us look for that in which they must have been understood by the Conventions, or rather by the people who thro’ their Conventions, accepted & ratified it. And here the evidence is if possible still more irresistible, that the terms could not have been regarded as giving a scope to federal Legislation, infinitely more objectionable, than any of the specified powers which produced such strenuous opposition, and calls for amendments which might be safeguards against the dangers apprehended from them.

Without recurring to the published debates of those Conventions, which as far as they can be relied on for accuracy, would it is believed not impair the evidence furnished by their recorded proceedings, it will suffice to consult the lists of amendments proposed by such of the Conventions as considered the powers granted to the new Government too extensive or not safely defined.

Besides the restrictive & explanatory amendments to the text of the constitution it may be observed, that a long list was premised under the name & in the nature of “Declarations of Rights”; all of them indicating a jealousy of the federal powers, and an anxiety to multiply securities against a constructive enlargement of them. But the appeal is more particularly made to the number & nature of the amendments proposed to be made specific & integral parts of the Constitutional text.

No less than seven States, it appears, concurred in adding to their ratifications, a series of amendments, wch they deemed requisite. Of these amendments nine were proposed by the Convention of Massachusetts; five by that of S. Carolina; twelve by that of N. Hampshire; twenty by that of Virginia; thirty three by that of N. York; twenty six by that of N. Carolina; twenty one by that of R. Island.

Here are a majority of the States, proposing amendments, in one instance thirty three by a single State; all of them intended to circumscribe the powers granted to the General Government by explanations restrictions or prohibitions, without including a single proposition from a single State, referring to the terms, common defence & general welfare; which if understood to convey the asserted power, could not have failed to be the power most strenuously aimed at because evidently more alarming in its range, than all the powers objected to put together. And that the terms should