ing; and our Constitution is founded on three great compromises, the first of which was between the great and the small states.

First

compromise.

Under the old Confederation the states had each one vote in Congress, regardless of size, wealth, or population; but the Virginia. plan now proposed that the states be represented in the Congress, consisting of two houses, according to population or wealth. Instantly the small states were up in arms. The greatest state, Virginia, would then have sixteen votes, while Georgia or Delaware would have but one. No, they would submit to nothing of the sort; the large states would combine against the small ones, and the voice of the latter would not be heard in national affairs, and they would be reduced to a subordinate position. After a long, wrangling debate on this subject a compromise was reached. It was agreed that in the lower House the representation be based on population, while in the upper House, or Senate, each state be equally represented without regard to its population, wealth, or its territorial extent. Thus each state has two senators, while in the House of Representatives the number of its delegates is determined by its population. The Senate, therefore, was intended to represent the states, and the House the people.

Second compromise.

The second compromise was between free and the slave states. The Northern states all had slaves before the Revolution, but they were now obviously drifting toward emancipation, while the institution was strengthening in the far South; and the dispute that arose in the convention over slavery was the beginning of that long and dreadful conflict which covered three fourths of a century and ended in a final appeal to the sword. The quarrel over this point was sharp and passionate, but it ended in compromise. Before it was decided whether to base the lower House on population or on wealth the question arose, Are slaves population or wealth? The northern delegates contended that as slaves had no vote and were bought and sold like other property, they should not be counted in the census that made up the representation in Congress, and in laying direct taxes. The South objected to this, claiming that all the slaves should be counted; and there was a deadlock. Madison suggested that, by way of compromise, three fifths of the slaves be counted. The South agreed to this, and the practice continued to the Civil War.

1 At this juncture Yates and Lansing of New York, and a little later Luther Martin of Maryland, all of the extreme state rights party, went home in disgust.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

331

The third compromise, between commercial and agricultural states, also touched upon the slavery question. New England desired that Congress be given full control over foreign and interstate commerce. The southern delegates, fearing an export tax on farm products and a prohibition of the slave trade, desired that each state control its own commerce, as under the old régime. Another deadlock ensued. Before this question was settled another arose: Shall the African slave trade be prohibited? A large majority of the delegates opposed the foreign slave trade, and would have shut it off forever; but South Carolina and Georgia objected in thunder tones. They must have a constant supply of blacks for the rice swamps, they said, and they would not join the Union if the question were decided against them. The debates were fierce and the convention seemed on the verge of dissolution, as it had been several times before. Could a union really be formed? Some of the wisest men feared that their efforts would result in failure. Rhode Island had taken no part in the convention; the New York delegates had gone home in anger; Massachusetts was uncertain. If now the Southern states refused to join, it was certain that no union could be formed. Two important questions were now before the House and again harmony was restored by compromise. The South yielded to New England, and Congress was given control over commerce (except that it was forbidden to lay an export tax); the North yielded to the slaveholders, and the African trade was left open, not forever, but until the year 1808. The most arduous work of the convention was now at an end, but many minor matters remained to be settled. The creating of a Supreme Court; the relations of the two houses of Congress to each other and of both to the executive; the powers of Congress, of the executive, and of the judiciary; the length of the various terms of office, these and many other things were fully debated, and were at length decided as we have them in the Constitution. It was decided that there be but one executive (though some preferred a plural executive), and that he should be styled the President of the United States of America. It was also decided that he be elected by Congress for a term of seven years, and that he be ineligible for reëlection. Thus the matter rested for several weeks, when it was again taken up. Many

Third compromise.

Minor

decisions.

1 Some of these questions, however, had been debated from time to time, and were decided before the three great compromises were fully disposed of.

tures.

objected to the electing of the President by Congress, as he would then be but a creature of that body and subservient to its will. The same objection was urged against his election by the state legislaAn electing by a general vote of the people was favored by but one state-Pennsylvania. At length it was decided that the President be elected for four years, that he be eligible for reëlection, and that the choice be made by an electoral college created for the purpose, and dissolved, after doing its work, into the great mass of the people, so that the President would be responsible to the people alone. This feature was borrowed from the constitution of Maryland.

No part of the Constitution was more earnestly and honestly considered than the method of electing the President, and no part of it is now carried out with such an utter disregard of the spirit and intention of the framers. It was intended that the electors use their discretion in choosing a President; but the people, as they grew more intelligent and divided into political parties, took the business of president-making into their own hands, retaining the electoral college, now a lifeless piece of machinery, only to carry out the letter of the law.

The Constitution of the United States is by far the most important production of its kind in human history. It created, without historic precedent, a federal-national government. It combined national strength with individual liberty in a degree so remarkable as to attract the world's admiration. Never before in the history of man had a government struck so fine a balance between liberty and union, between state rights and national sovereignty. The world had labored for ages to solve this greatest of all governmental problems, but it had labored in vain. Greece in her mad clamor for liberty had forgotten the need of the strength that union. brings, and she perished. Rome made the opposite mistake. Rome fostered union nationality. for its strength until it became a tyrant, and strangled the child Liberty. It was left for our own Revolutionary fathers to strike the balance between these opposing tendencies, to join them in perpetual wedlock in such a way as to secure the benefits of both. A century of experience, it is true, was needed to adjust this balance as we now have it, but the whole substructure to our national edifice was laid at Philadelphia in 1787.

Yet there is little in our Constitution that was created by its framers. Much of it is as old as Magna Charta, says Mr. Bryce. The words of Mr. Gladstone, that it is the greatest work ever struck off

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

333

at any one time by the mind and purpose of man, are in one sense misleading. The work was not struck off at one time. The framers of the Constitution gleaned from history, from the mother land, and especially from the various state constitutions. As noticed in a former chapter, the earliest colonial governments were based on the charters of trading corporations; the colonial governments were then transformed into the earliest state constitutions, and these became the basis of the federal Constitution.1

2

Sources of the
Constitution.

It will be interesting here to notice the sources of a few of the features of the national Constitution. From the constitution of Maryland we have a small Senate with a long term of service, and the idea of an electoral college for choosing a President and a Vice President; from the constitution of New York, the periodic readjustment of the representation after each census, and the Vice President's duty to preside over the Senate and to vote only in case of a tie.3 From the constitution of Massachusetts were derived the powers and duties of the two houses with respect to impeachments. The power of the executive to veto an act of the legislature and the requirement of a two-thirds affirmative vote for its repassage were in use in Massachusetts. A few features, as the judiciary system, the short term for the lower House, and the single executive, were common to nearly all the states. Other features, as army appropriations limited to two years, are analogous to English customs; while the two-chambered legislature had its models in Parliament, and in all but two states.

We find in the Constitution a few features original with the framers, such as the isolated position of the President, the basing of representation on population, and many minor details. But on the whole the instrument was a compilation, not an original production. It was the culmination of the institutional growth of two centuries a tree with trunk and branches purely American, grafted on an English root. The framers of our Constitution were very wisetoo wise to draw on their imagination, or to base the government of a nation on theory. No man, or body of men, can create systems of

1 This subject is ably discussed by W. C. Morey in a series of articles in the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," Vols. I and IV 2 Maryland chose her senators through an electoral college composed of two persons from each county.

3 New York's lieutenant governor had this power.

4 J. H. Robinson, in "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," Vol. I, p. 219. 5" Federalist," No. 61.

government. They must grow. Had these men attempted to create a chimerical structure, their work would have been valueless. But they displayed great wisdom in selecting the best things that had been tried and proved, and in but few points did they choose unwisely. Hence their great success. Hence the astonishing fact that this same Constitution is still the supreme law of the land, and is more deeply imbedded in the American heart to-day than ever before.

The new instrument differed from the old Articles chiefly in creating three great coördinate departments — legislative, executive, and judicial; in making the citizen rather than the state amenable to national law; and in withholding from the states, and vesting in the national government, powers the exercise of which pertain to the whole people to coin money, to wage war, to deal with foreign nations, to lay a tariff, and the like. One of the most important clauses in the Constitution is the "supreme law" clause, by virtue of which the Supreme Court came to exercise the power to interpret the Constitution, and to pronounce upon the constitutionality of the acts of the legislative branch of the government, a remarkable power, enjoyed by no other judicial body in the world.

The great work of the convention was completed, and the document was signed by thirty-nine delegates on the 17th of September. It did not fully meet the ideas of any one; each had yielded his convictions at some point. But it was believed to be the best attainable at the time, and all the delegates except sixteen, all but three of whom had departed for their homes,' put their names to it, not one of them perhaps believing that it would stand for half a century.

After providing for amending the Constitution, and for its going into operation when nine states should ratify it, the delegates sent it to Congress, then sitting in New York. That body sent it forth to the various states without a word of approval or disapproval.

THE CONSTITUTION BEFORE THE PEOPLE

The ship Constitution had experienced a rough voyage thus far; but the most dangerous breakers were still ahead. Nearly half the Federalists people opposed the new plan of government, and a bitter contest resulted. Those favoring the Constitution called themselves Federalists, while they dubbed their opponents Anti-federalists. The cry of the Anti-federalists was

and Antifederalists.

1 Randolph and Mason of Virginia and Gerry of Massachusetts were the three remaining delegates who refused to sign.