Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/534

 so readily applied to the new Govt. and that it has become so universal & familiar. It may safely be affirmed that the same wd. have been the case, whatever name might have been given to it by the props. of Mr. R. or by the Convention. A Govt: which alone is known & acknowledged by all foreign nations, and alone charged with the international relations, could not fail to be deemed & called at home, a Natl. Govt.

After all, in discussing & expounding the character & import of a Constn., let candor decide whether it be not more reasonable & just, to interpret the name or title by facts on the face of it, than to make the title torture the facts by a bed of Procrustes into a fitness to the title.

I must leave it to yourself to judge whether this exposition of the Resolns. in question be not sufficiently reasonable to protect them from the imputation of a consolidating tendency, and still more the Virga Deputies from having that for their object.

With respect to Mr. R. particularly, is not some respect due to his public letter to the Speaker of ye. H. of D. in which he gives for his refusal to sign the Constn: reasons irreconcileable with the supposition that he cd. have proposed the Resolns. in a meaning charged on them? Of Col. Mason who also refused, it may be inferred from his avowed reasons that he cd. not have acquiesced in the propositions, if understood or intended to effect a Consol. Gov.

So much use has been made of Judge Yates’ minutes of debates in the Convention, that I must be allowed to remark that they abound in inaccuracies, and are not free from gross errors some of which do much injustice to the arguments & opinions of particular members. All this may be explained without a charge of wilful misrepresentation by the very desultory manner in which his notes appear to have been taken his ear catching particular expressions & losing qualifications of them; and by prejudices giving to his mind, all the bias which an honest one could feel. He & his colleague were the Representatives of the dominant party in N. York, which was opposed to the Convention & the object of it, which was averse to any essential change in the Articles of Confederation, which had inflexibly refused to grant even a duty of 5 per Ct. on imports for the urgent debt of the Revolution, which was availing itself, of the peculiar situation of New York, for taxing the consumption of her neighbours, and which foresaw that a primary aim of the Convention wd. be to transfer from the States to the Common authority, the entire regulation of foreign Commerce. Such were the feelings of the two Deputies, that on finding the Convention bent on radical reform of