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 Petition to be presented to the Congress 
 
 3 1924 019 886 534 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924019886534 
 
PETITION 
 
 TO BE PRESENTED TO 
 THE CONGRESS ON FEB- 
 RUARY 16, 1914. THE 131st 
 ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 PUBLICATION AT PHIL- 
 ADELPHIA. OF PELATIAH 
 WEBSTER'S EPOCH MAK- 
 ING TRACT OF FEBRUARY 
 16. 1783. CONTAINING THE 
 FIRST DRAFT OF THE 
 EXISTING CONSTITUTION 
 OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
"History is studied from documents. Documents are the 
 traces which have been left by the thoughts and actions of men 
 of former times. There is no substitute for documents; no 
 documents, no history." 
 
 — Ch.-V. Langlois. 
 
 "Under the shell there was an animal, and behind the docu- 
 ment there was a man. The shell and the document are lifeless 
 wrecks, valuable only as a clue to the entire and liting existence. 
 We must reach back to this existence, endeavor to recreate it." 
 
 — ^Taine. 
 
 "Mankind resents nothing so much as the intrusion upon 
 them of a new and disturbing truth. The huge, dead weight 
 of stupidity and indolence is always ready to smother audacious 
 inquiries." 
 
 — ^Sir Leslie Stephen. 
 
 "The world resents any attempt to show that it has fallen 
 into an error." 
 
 — ^Herbert Spencer. 
 
 " Who does not know that it is the first and fundamental law 
 of history that it should neither dare to say anything that is 
 false, nor fear to say anything that is true, nor give any just 
 suspicion of partiality on the one hand or of personal animosity 
 
 on the other." 
 
 — Cicero. 
 
I. 
 
 Finances of the Revolution in 1783. 
 
 II. 
 Pelatiah Webster a master of economics and finance. 
 
 III. 
 
 Circumstances under which the epoch-making paper of February 16, 
 
 1783, was written. 
 
 IV. 
 A supreme Federal Government with the power to tax. 
 
 V. 
 Division of a Federal Government into three departments. 
 
 VI. 
 A Federal President surrounded by a Cabinet. 
 
 VII. 
 A bicameral Federal Legislature. 
 
 VIII. 
 A Federal judicial system. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The reserved rights of the States. 
 
 X. 
 
 Webster the first expounder and defender of the new Constitution. 
 
 XI. 
 The draftsmen of the three plans— Madison, Pinckney and Hamilton. 
 
 XII. 
 Absurdity of the "Inspiration Theory." 
 
 XIII. 
 Federal Convention of 1787 and its work. 
 
PELATIAH WEESTER, THE ARCHITECT AND FIRST EXPOUNDER OF 
 OUR SECOND FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF 1787, AS PERSONATED IN 
 THE FAMOUS "HISTORICAL PAGEANT OF 1912," AT PHILADELPHIA, 
 BY HIS GREAT-GRANDSON, PELATIAH WEBSTER HUNTINGTON. 
 
FEBRUARY 16, 1783 FEBRUARY 16. 1914. 
 
 PETITION 
 
 To be presented to Congress by Hannls Taylor on February 16, 1914, the 
 131st anniversary of the publication at Philadelphia of Pelatiah Webster's 
 epoch-making tract of February 16, 1783, containing the first draft of the 
 existing constitution of the United States, the prayer of the petition con- 
 sisting of a request that G>ngress take into consideration the erection of a 
 tablet or other appropriate memorial in or near the Capitol. 
 
 To the Speaker of the House of Representatices. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: The undersigned petitions the House to 
 pause on this day — the real birthday of the second and 
 existing Constitution of the United States — in order to 
 contemplate the marvelous invention which made the exist- 
 ence of that Constitution possible. On February 16, 1783, 
 Pelatiah Webster, the first distinguished member of the 
 famous New England family of that name, a master of the 
 science of economics and finance, who may justly be called 
 the American Adam Smith of that day, published at Phila- 
 delphia, as his intention, the "wholly novel theory" of a 
 federal government embodied soon thereafter by the Federal 
 Convention of 1 787 in the existing Constitution of the United 
 States. The invention thus promulgated was elaborated in 
 great detail and spread broadcast in a pamphlet of 47 pages, 
 printed at the well-known press of T. Bradford, only five 
 blocks removed from Independence Hall, in which the Conti- 
 nental Congress was then sitting. An original copy of that 
 epoch-making publication, entitled "A dissertation on the 
 political union and constitution of the thirteen United States 
 
of North America, which is necessary to their preservation 
 and happiness; humbly offered to the public by a citizen of 
 Philadelphia," and just as authentic as the Constitution 
 itself, is on file in the Library of Congress subject to inspec- 
 tion by any one having the slightest doubt upon the subject. 
 Certainly the time has arrived when the American people, 
 whose greatest pride should be in their greatest invention, 
 should listen to the admonition of Cicero, who, in the De 
 Oratore, has said: 
 
 "Who does not know that it is the first and fundamental 
 law of history that it should neither dare to say anything 
 that is false nor fear to say anything that is true, nor give 
 any just suspicion of partiality on the one hand or of personal 
 animosity on the other." 
 
 FINANCES OF THE REVOLUTION IN 1783. 
 
 No practical mind, free from prejudice and under the sway 
 of common sense, should have the slightest difficulty in 
 grasping the real origin of the invention in question, when 
 the fact is taken into account that it was made by a trained 
 financier at a critical moment when the financial necessities 
 of the country imperiously demanded it. The cessation of 
 hostilities with great Britain, followed as it was by the sign- 
 ing of the preliminary articles of peace at Paris, January 20, 
 1 783, had brought the financiers of the Revolution, burdened 
 with an unpaid army and a foreign debt, face to face with 
 the mighty problem of providing, without any visible or 
 reliable means, for the obligations that represented the cost 
 of victory. The Continental Congress was fading surely, 
 and not very slowly, into the shadow of a nsime; it was with 
 difficulty that men of the first class could be induced to sit 
 as members of it. After two thousand years and more of 
 
painful experience the ancient form of a federal government, 
 as embodied in our first constitution known as the Articles 
 of Confederation, had ended in failure and disappointment. 
 In the midst of the collapse the only real bond of cohesion 
 which held the states together was a man, and that man was 
 Washington. That he was mightier than the Congress 
 appears from a letter written, August 4, 1783, to Vergennes 
 by Luzerne who said: 
 
 "The taxes, so poorly collected during the war, are yet 
 worse collected at this time. * * * Everyone is reduced 
 to the necessity of waiting the result of the letter of General 
 Washington; and more is hoped from the consideration of a 
 single citizen, than from the authority of the sovereign body." 
 
 PELATIAH WEBSTER A MASTER OF ECONOMICS AND 
 
 FINANCE. 
 
 At that critical moment in our history, when the possibility 
 of begiiming a new national life depended upon the creation 
 of a new system of public finance, a genius appeared upon 
 the scene who was equal to the occasion. This daring 
 innovator, whose instincts as a financier made him the first 
 to understand the necessity for an entirely new federal fabric, 
 was born at Lebanon, Conn., in 1726, and graduated at Yale 
 College in 1746. In 1755 he moved to Philadelphia where 
 he became a prosperous merchant; and during the British 
 occupation in 1778 he was arrested at night on account of 
 his ardor in the patriot cause, and closely confined in prison, 
 a large part of his property being confiscated to the King's 
 stores. As early as 1 776 he had begun to write on the cur- 
 rency, and three years later he began the publication of the 
 famous series of "Essays on Free Trade and Finance." We 
 are told by a high authority that during the war "members 
 
of Congress, especially the Connecticut delegates, were in 
 the hahit of passing the evening with him, to consult him 
 upon financial and political concerns;" and when in July, 
 1782, a petition was to be presented to Congress in behalf 
 of "the deranged officers of the lines of Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut," Webster was appealed to for his influence. 
 In a petition drawn in the noblest style he presented the 
 case, which was finally referred to a special committee whose 
 report, which survives in the handwriting of Alexander 
 Hamilton, is dated March 6, 1 783, just eighteen days after 
 the publication of the great paper of February 16, of that 
 year. The late Professor Sumner of Yale in his history of 
 the "Finances of the American Revolution," says: 
 
 "In February, 1780, Pelatiah Webster urged the appoint- 
 ment of a financier — that is, of a competent single officer — 
 to take charge of the finances in place of the committees or 
 boards who had hitherto been intrusted with them." 
 
 Thus it appears that Webster, while attempting to improve 
 the finances of the Confederation, created the office to which 
 Robert Morris was appointed, as our first real Secretary of 
 the Treasury. Madison tells us, with great formality, in 
 his famous "Papers" that in 1781 Pelatiah Webster, in one 
 of his financial essays published in May of that year, was 
 the first to propose the calling of a "Continental Convention" 
 for the making of an entirely new constitution. 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH THE EPOCH-MAKING 
 PAPER OF FEBRUARY 16. 1783. WAS WRITTEN. 
 
 Just one year and nine months after Webster thus proposed 
 to break with the past— by being the first to suggest the 
 calling of a "Continental Convention" to be charged with 
 the duty of making an entirely new Constitution— he pub- 
 lished at Philadelphia on February 16, 1783, his path-break- 
 
ing tract of 47 printed pages, in which he dared to set forth 
 in great detail just what that new Constitution should be. 
 Nothing could be more graphic than the terms in which 
 Webster himself has described the conditions under which 
 his wholly novel and unique plan of federal government was 
 formulated. To the republication of his plan, made at 
 Philadelphia in 1791, he appended this note: 
 
 "At the time when this Dissertation was written (Feb. 
 
 16, 1783) the defects and insufficiency of the Old Federal 
 Constitution were universally felt and acknowledged. It 
 was manifested, not only that the internal police, justice, 
 security and peace of the States could never be preserved 
 under it, but the finances and public credit would necessarily 
 become so embarrassed, precarious and void of support that 
 no public movement which depended on the revenue could 
 be managed with any effectual certainty; but though the 
 public mind was under full conviction of all these mischiefs 
 and was contemplating a remedy, yet the public ideas were 
 not at all concentrated, much less arranged into any new system 
 or form of government which would obviate these evils. Under 
 these circumstances I offered this Dissertation to the public. 
 How far the principles of it were adopted or rejected in the 
 New Constitution, which was four years afterwards (Sept. 
 
 17, 1787) formed by the General Convention and since 
 ratified by all the States, is obvious to every one." 
 
 His own presentation of his case is conclusive. At the 
 time of the publication of his invention "the public ideas 
 were not at all concentrated, much less arranged into any 
 new system or form of government which would obviate 
 these evils." The silly statement often made that about 
 that time (February 16, 1783) such a scheme of government 
 as Webster proposed was "in the air" is simply mendacious.* 
 
 *In the winter of 1784-85 Noah Webster, then a young man of 27, printed over 
 his own name, an abridgment of the great paper of February 16, 1783. That banren 
 reprint, whidi failed to add a single original suggestion, is contained in his "Sketches 
 of American Policy." 
 
The spiteful critics who have attempted to rob him of his 
 glory have never been able to find a scintilla of contempo- 
 raneous evidence to support such a story. It was years 
 afterwards before any proposals at all like it were made. 
 Prior to Webster's publication there is no trace of any other 
 plan or project of a new Constitution that can be placed in 
 contrast or rivalry with his "wholly novel theory." The 
 great architect thus stands alone and isolated from all rivals 
 in the solitude of his own originality. 
 
 A SUPREME FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WITH THE POWER 
 
 TO TAX. 
 
 The epoch-making document in question is so systematic, 
 so lucid, with every thought worked out in such detail, that 
 it is easy to follow the mental processes through which the 
 "great discovery in modern political science," as Tocqueville 
 has called it, was evolved from the brain of the daring inno- 
 vator who was at once economist, statesman, and financier. 
 The overshadowing practical difficulty to be removed was 
 that involved in the fact that the one chsunber Congress of 
 the Confederation possessed no power to tax. To use 
 Webster's own words: "They could assess and levy no taxes." 
 No federal government that had ever existed had been 
 armed with the power to tax. In this country the entire 
 taxing power was then vested in the states. Webster's 
 dream was to create a self-executing Federal system, armed with 
 the power to tax, and operating directly on the individual — an 
 invention of which no trace or hint is to be found in the Consti- 
 tutions of the Greek or Teutonic Leagues, in the Articles of 
 Confederation patterned after theim, or in the prior utterances 
 of any other American. 
 
 8 
 
He said: 
 
 "I begin with my first and great principle, viz: That the 
 Constitution must vest powers in every department sufficient 
 to secure and make effectual the ends of it. 
 
 "They must therefore of necessity be vested with power of 
 taxation. I \now this is a most important and weighty truth, 
 a dreadful engine of oppression, tyranny, and injury when ill 
 used; yet, from the necessity of the case, it must be admitted. 
 
 "To make all these payments dependent on the votes of 
 13 popular assemblies, who will judge of the propriety of 
 every contract and every occasion of money, and grant or 
 withhold supplies, according to their opinions, whilst at the 
 same time the operations of the whole may be stopped by 
 the vote of a single one of them, is absurd. * * * This 
 tax can be laid by the supreme authority much more conoeniently 
 than by the particular assemblies, and would in no case be 
 subject to their repeals or modifications, and of course the public 
 credit would never de dependent on or liable to bankruptcy 
 by the humors of any particular assembly." 
 
 Out of that brilliant and daring proposal to arm a Federal 
 assembly with "the supreme authority" to levy all kinds of 
 Federal taxes, regardless of the "repeals or modifications" 
 of the States composing the Union, arose the existing Con- 
 stitution of the United States. The moment it was settled 
 that such a supreme Government was to be established it 
 followed that such a Government must be completely organ- 
 ized, with the authority to execute its own laws and decrees 
 directly upon individuals through machinery adequate to 
 that end. From the original concept necessarily resulted a 
 completely organized Government "with the usual branches, 
 legislative, executive, and judicial; with the direct power of 
 taxation and the other usual powers of a Government; with 
 its Army, its Navy, its civil service, and all the usual appa- 
 
ratus of a Government, all bearing directly upon every citizen 
 of the Union without any reference to the governments of 
 the several States." 
 
 DIVISION OF A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INTO THREE 
 DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 The moment Webster saw that his new creation must be a 
 strictly organized and self-sustaining government, he pro- 
 posed to divide it into three departments — legislative, execu- 
 tive, and judicial — as that partial division then existed in 
 the State constitutions. There never had been a Federal 
 Government so divided in the world's history. There was no 
 such division in the Government created by the Articles of 
 Confederation. To use again Webster's words: "It [the 
 confederation] blended the legislative and executive powers 
 together in one body' ' [the Continental Congress] . 1 1 follows 
 therefore, that Webster's second proposal to divide a Federal 
 Goternment into three departments — legislative, executive, 
 and judicial — was but little less bold than his first, which 
 involved the arming of such a creation with the independent 
 power of taxation. And yet some superficial critics have not 
 had the acumen to draw the distinction between the dividing 
 of the government of a single State like England or Virginia 
 into three departments, and the dividing of a Federal State 
 into three departments. The division of the government of 
 a single State in that way had long been known. It was 
 Webster who first conceived the idea involved in the applica- 
 tion of such a division to a Federal system, an irmovation 
 that resulted in momentous consequences. 
 
 A FEDERAL PRESIDENT SURROUNDED BY A CABINET. 
 
 As the Articles of Confederation did not provide for an 
 executive of any kind, the people of this country had never 
 
 ID 
 
heard of a President of the United States, much less of a 
 President surrounded by a Cabinet council. Webster was 
 the first to provide for both. He proposed that the execu- 
 tive power should be vested in a President, surrounded by 
 a Cabinet or council composed of the "great ministers of 
 state," such President to be elected by Congress, as the 
 President of France is now elected. "The financier manages 
 the whole subject of revenues and expenditures, the Secretary 
 of State takes knowledge of the general policy and internal 
 government, the minister of war presides in the whole busi- 
 ness of war and defense, and the minister of foreign affairs 
 regards the whole state of the Nation, as it stands related to, 
 or connected with, all foreign powers." Later on he says 
 the "great ministers of state shall superintend all the execu- 
 tive departments and appoint all executive officers, who shall 
 ever be accountable and removable for just cause by them 
 or Congress, i. c, either of them." 
 
 A BICAMERAL FEDERAL LEGISLATURE. 
 
 Just as the State constitutions admonished Webster to 
 split the new Federal Government into three departments, 
 executive, legislative, and judicial, so the bicameral State 
 legislatures admonished him to split the one-chamber Con- 
 gress of the Confederation into two chambers, an upper and 
 a lower House. As the draftsman of the Articles of Con- 
 federation, Franklin was content to follow a model 2,000 
 years old. All Federal assemblies down to that time had 
 consisted of a single chamber. Therefore Franklin made the 
 Continental Congress to consist of only one chamber. In 
 criticizing Franklin's work Webster said: "This body, viz., 
 Congress, consisted of but one House, without any check 
 upon their resolution." As an improvement he proposed 
 
 II 
 
"that Congress shall consist of /too chambers, an upper and a 
 lower House, or Senate and Commons, with the concurrence 
 of both necessary to every act, and that every State send 
 one or more delegates to each House. This will subject 
 every act to two discussions before two distinct chambers 
 of men equally qualified for the debate, equally masters of 
 the subject, and of equal ambitions in the decision. These 
 two Houses will be governed by the same natural motives 
 and interests, viz., the good of the Commonwealth and the 
 approbation of the people." In commenting upon the 
 manner in which the Members should be chosen Webster 
 said: 
 
 "The delegates which are to form that august body, lohich 
 are to hold and exercise the supreme atdhority, ought to be 
 appointed by the states in any manner they please, in which 
 they should not be limited by any restrictions; their own 
 dignity and the weight they will hold in the great public 
 council will always depend on the abilities of the persons 
 they appoint to represent them there." 
 
 Finally he said: 
 
 "It is necessary that Congress should have all usual and 
 necessary powers of self-preservation and order, e. g., to 
 imprison for contempt, insult, or interruption, etc., and to 
 expel their own Members for due causes, among which I 
 would rank that of non-attendance on the House, or partial 
 attendance without such excuse as shall satisfy the House." 
 
 In thus defining the Constitution of the American Congress 
 as it exists to-day Webster provided even for details. Never 
 before had the world heard of a Federal assembly of two 
 chambers instead of one. And yet the American Congress 
 thus brought into being has never so far recognized the 
 
 12 
 
existence of its creator. It has "carved not a line, it has 
 raised not a stone; it has left him alone in his glory." 
 
 A FEDERAL JUDICIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 An important count in Webster's indictment against the 
 Articles of Confederation was that "they could institute no 
 general judiciary powers." That difficulty he proposed to 
 remove in his new system by creating a Supreme Court, 
 with jurisdiction original and appellate, and such inferior 
 courts of law and equity as the necessities of the country 
 might require. He outlined the Supreme Court, with juris- 
 diction both original and appellate, in these terms: 
 
 "That the supreme authority should be vested with powers 
 to terminate and finally decide controversies arising between 
 different states, I take it, will be universally admitted, but 
 I humbly apprehend that an appeal from the first instance 
 of trial ought to be admitted in causes of great moment, on 
 the same reasons that such appeals are admitted in all the 
 States of Europe. It is well known to all men versed in 
 courts that the first hearing of a cause rather gives an opening 
 to that evidence and reason which ought to decide it than 
 such a full examination and thorough discussion as should 
 always precede a final judgment in causes of national conse- 
 quence. A detail of reasons might be added, which I deem 
 it unnecessary to enlarge on here." 
 
 Thus emerged, for the first time, the splendid conception 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States as it now exists, 
 armed not only with original jurisdiction "to terminate and 
 finally decide controversies arising between different states," 
 but also with an appellate jurisdiction "in causes of great 
 moment on the same reasons that such appeals are admitted 
 in all the States of Europe." As to the inferior Federal 
 courts, he concluded with this declaration: 
 
 13 
 
"To these I would add judges of law and chancery; but I 
 fear they will not be very soon appointed — the one supposes 
 the existence of law, the other of equity — and when we shall 
 be altogether convinced of the absolute necessity of the real 
 and effectual existence of both of these, we shall probably 
 appoint proper heads to preside in these departments." 
 
 Webster perfectly understood that the supremacy of 
 Federal law would be the necessary result of his proposed 
 judicial system. He said: 
 
 "(1) No laws of any State whatever, which do not carry 
 in them a force which extends to their effectual and final 
 execution, can afford a certain or sufficient security to the 
 subject. This is too plain to need any proof. (2) Laws or 
 ordinances of any kind (especially of august bodies of high 
 dignity and consequence) which fail of execution, are much 
 worse than none. * * * (3) To appoint a Congress with 
 powers to do all acts necessary for the support and uses of 
 the Union, and at the same time to leave all the states at 
 liberty to obey them or not with impunity is, in every view, 
 the greatest absurdity. Further I propose that if the execu- 
 tion of any act or order of the supreme authority shall be opposed 
 by force in any of the states (which God forbid), it shall be 
 lawful for Congress to send into such State a sufl&cient force 
 to suppress it. On the whole, I take it that the very existence 
 and use of our Union essentially depends on the full energy 
 and final effect of the laws made to support it, and therefore 
 I sacrifice all other* considerations to this energy and effect, 
 and if our Union is not worth this purchase, we must give 
 it up — ^the nature of the thing does not admit of any other 
 alternative." 
 
 THE RESERVED RIGHTS OF THE STATES. 
 
 Webster was no more eager, however, to arm his new 
 Federal creation with supremacy in the event that its laws 
 or decrees should be defied by the States than he was to 
 
 14 
 
guard against intrusion such rights as the States reserved 
 to themselves. Nothing could be more explicit on that 
 subject than these declarations: 
 
 "II. But now the great and most difficult part of this 
 weighty subject remains to be considered, viz., how these 
 supreme powers are to be constituted in such manner that 
 they may be able to exercise with full force and effect the vast 
 authorities committed to them for the good and well being of 
 the United States, and yet, be so checlfed and restrained 
 from exercising them to the injury and ruin of the States that 
 we may with safety trust them with a commission of such vast 
 magnitude (the first definition of State rights) — ^and may 
 Almighty Wisdom direct my pen in this arduous discussion. 
 * * * I propose further that the powers of Congress, 
 and all the other departments acting under them, shall be 
 restricted to such matters only of general necessity and 
 utility to all the States as cannot come within the jurisdiction 
 of any particular State, or to which the authority of any 
 particular State is not competent, so that each particular 
 State shall enjoy all sovereignty and supreme authority to all 
 intents and purposes, excepting only those high authorities and 
 powers by them delegated to Congress for the purposes of the 
 general union." 
 
 Here we have in advance, and in a more elaborate form, 
 the tenth £imendment, which declares that "the powers not 
 delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
 prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
 respectively, or to the people." Nothing could be more clear 
 and explicit than Webster's declaration that his new Federal 
 fabric was to be one of delegated and strictly limited powers, 
 and yet one absolutely supreme within the limits of its 
 jurisdiction as defined by its own tribimals. 
 
 15 
 
WEBSTER THE FIRST EXPOUNDER AND DEFENDER OF 
 THE NEW CONSTITUTION. 
 
 When the existing Constitution of the United States was 
 given to the world, after the adjournment of the Federal Con- 
 vention on the 17th of September, 1787, Pelatiah Webster, a 
 citizen of Philadelphia, was able to greet and defend the child of 
 his brain with a father's zeal and a father's love. Then it was 
 that he promptly took his place at the side of Washington, who 
 nearly exhausted his moral authority in a supreme effort to 
 force the States to ratify it. While the jealous Titans were 
 halting between their local self-interests and their fears of 
 a total dissolution of the Union — rendered imminent by a 
 bitter opposition upon the part of many to the commerce 
 clause — the enemies of the new Constitution attempted to 
 strangle it at its birth by inducing Permsylvania to reject it. 
 With that end in view an unpatriotic minority of the 
 Assembly of that State, on' September 29— after attempting 
 on the day before to prevent, by breaking a quorum, the ref- 
 erence of the new Constitution to conventions of the States — 
 bitterly denounced it in an address to their constituents. 
 It was at that critical moment that Webster stood forth like 
 Horatius at the gate; in the first assault ever made upon the 
 new Constitution his strong right arm was the first raised 
 to defend it. On October 12, he fell upon the factious 
 secessionists and scourged them in a brilliant response to 
 their address, characterized by all the weightiness of Burke 
 and by the withering scorn of Junius. After answering all 
 of their objections to a Federal assembly of two chambers, 
 very nearly in the language in which he had originally pro- 
 posed such an assembly, he said: "Vide a 'Dissertation on 
 the Political Union and Constitution of the Thirteen United 
 States,' published by a citizen of Philadelphia, February 16, 
 
 i6 
 
1783, where the subject is taken up at large." The original 
 text of that remarkable yet almost entirely unknown paper 
 of October 12, 1787, in which Webster thus refers expressly 
 to his first performance for a more extended statement of 
 his argument, is to be found in the Boston Athenaeum and 
 in the Library of Congress. It is certainly notable as the 
 first popular exposition ever made of the new Constitution 
 after the adjournment of the Convention; and above all it 
 fixes the fact that the author of the "great discovery in 
 modem political science" was also its first expounder and 
 defender. Under the leadership of Pelatiah Webster was thus 
 fought out, in the streets of Philadelphia, the first battle for 
 the Constitution, resulting on December 12 in the ratification 
 of Pennsylvania by a vote of 46 to 23. 
 
 THE DRAFTSMEN OF THE THREE PLANS-MADISON. 
 PINCKNEY AND HAMILTON. 
 
 On the day Webster laid his complete and wholly novel 
 plan of a Federal Government at the door of the Continental 
 Congress, Madison, then thirty-two, and Hamilton, then 
 twenty-six were in their places in that assembly in which 
 Charles Pinckney, then twenty-five, took his place not long 
 afterwards. Only the blind or infatuated will contend that 
 these vigilant and ambitious young statesmen, intent upon 
 improving conditions then crying out for a remedy, did not 
 read and master the contents of the great document;, the 
 first to propose the construction of a new Federal system, 
 published "at the seat of government," under their very eyes 
 on February 1 6, 1 783. As a trained and experienced financier 
 and stateman of fifty-seven Webster was certainly far better 
 equipped to solve a problem, in its essence financial and 
 commercial, than either Madison, Pinckney, or Hamilton 
 
 17 
 
could have been at that time. He formulated, in the light 
 of his experience, the novel principles they were to translate 
 into a working system of government. After reflecting for 
 four years upon Webster's startling proposal, the three 
 brilliant young statesmen in question restated it, each from 
 his own point of view, in three plans, carefully formulated 
 long before the meeting of the Federal Convention in May, 
 1 787. From his life by Rives we known that Madison was 
 at work on the so-called Virginia plan at least a year before- 
 hand; the elaborate plan or "system" presented by Charles 
 Pinckney was described in his "Observations" months before 
 his departure from Charleston; while the Hamilton plan was 
 worked out so elaborately beforehand as a constitution that 
 it might have gone into effect the next day, as his son tells us, 
 if it had been adopted.* 
 
 ABSURDITY OF THE "INSPIRATION THEORY." 
 
 No popular myth was ever so absurd, so foundationless as 
 that so justly ridiculed and labeled by the great German his- 
 torian Von Hoist the "Inspiration Theory," which assumes, in 
 the face of all the crushing documentary evidence to the con- 
 trary, that the "great discovery in modern political science" 
 emerged , after the doors were closed, through some super- 
 normal process, from the combined brains of the Convention 
 which only worked eighty-six days. The records show 
 that the "great discovery" was taken as a whole into the 
 Convention in three plans, prearranged long beforehand, 
 two of which were presented the moment the Convention was 
 organized for business. No deliberative body ever had its 
 work so cut out and arranged beforehand as the Federal 
 
 *I have demonstrated long ago (see Yale Law Journal for December, 1908) that 
 the so-called "Connecticut plan" of which Bancroft has said so much, existed only 
 in his imagination. The records do not contain it. 
 
 I8 
 
Convention of 1787. From the time the plans were sub- 
 mitted to the close the single question before the secret 
 conclave was as to the form in which the great invention of 
 February 1 6, 1 783, should be adapted to then existing con- 
 ditions as a working system of government. The confusion 
 long existing in the public mind on this all-important subject 
 was the natural outcome of the fact that the Convention 
 shrouded its proceedings in a secrecy as profound as that 
 which incloses a Masonic lodge, sealed its records at the close 
 and committed them to Washington with the injunction 
 "that he retain the Journal and other papers subject to the 
 order of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution." 
 Not until 1818 did Congress partially break the seal by 
 ordering the publication of the imperfect fragment known 
 as the "Journal;" and not until \9A\ , fifty-four years after the 
 adjournment, was the full record published in the three 
 volumes of priceless "Papers" prepared by the semi-official 
 reporter, James Madison. During that half century of 
 mystery and suppression it was that the mythical history of 
 what actually took place in the secret conclave crystallized 
 into a series of misty and misleading impressions so fixed 
 in the minds of the older men of the country that it is now 
 difficult to dislodge them, even with the aid of clear and 
 explicit documentary evidence. "My siege is finished," 
 exclaimed Vertot, when offered new documents which stulti- 
 fied his narrative. In the same spirit many of the 
 devotees of the pitiful "Inspiration Theory," redolent of 
 the "Faust-book," still respond even when the con- 
 nected documentary history of all that occurred is offered 
 them. Possibly Sir Leslie Stephen was right when he 
 said: "Mankind resents nothing so much as the intrusion 
 upon them of a new and disturbing truth;" possibly Herbert 
 
 19 
 
Spencer was right when he said: "The world resents any 
 attempt to show that it has fallen into an error." 
 
 THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787 AND ITS WORK. 
 
 But let us all remember that perfect justice may be done 
 to the fame of the great architect of our second Constitution 
 without injury to the fame of any of his contemporaries. 
 . Neither Madison, Pinckney nor Hamilton ever claimed to 
 be the author of the "great discovery" for the best of all 
 reasons — such a claim upon the part of one would have 
 involved him at once in a sharp conflict with the other two. 
 Nothing more can be said than that each failed to state the 
 source from which the fundamentals of his plan were drawn. 
 If the Convention had sat with open doors that omission 
 would have been impossible, because when the three plans 
 as drafted by Madison, Pinckney and Hamilton are placed 
 in juxtaposition with the original paper of February 16, 1783, 
 a mere comparison settles the fact that the great invention, 
 which is the basis of all of them, was drawn by each from the 
 common source. And yet Eifter that claim has been fully 
 admitted, as it will be by every honest and reasonable mind, 
 the fact remains that the master builders, who transformed 
 under the most difficult circumstances possible the dream — 
 it was only a dream — of the great architect into a working 
 system of government, achieved a result just as remarkable 
 as the invention itself. The philosophers, statesmen, jurists, 
 warriors, experienced men of affairs, who composed the 
 august assembly that wrought at Philadelphia in 1 787, may 
 be compared, as to genius and learning, with the master 
 spirits of any age. No assembly so small — it numbered only 
 fifty-live delegates — was ever dominated by so many men 
 of the highest order. They need not strut in borrowed 
 
 20 
 
plumes; they need no fame that belongs to another. The 
 most ardent worshiper of the master builders would only 
 belittle their immortality if he fancied that it could be at all 
 dimmed by the rendition of tardy justice to the great archi- 
 tect, the man of contemplation, who was their natural, 
 perhaps their necessary forerunner. 
 
 All have been rewarded, all have been honored except the 
 great one who made everything possible. While the priceless 
 legacy bequeathed by the immortal document of February 
 16, 1783, has become the heritage of swelling millions, an 
 humble and neglected grave at Philadelphia has been the 
 only recompense so far received by its author. Every 
 drummer boy, every foreigner, who rendered conspicuous 
 service to the patriot cause during the Revolutionary era 
 has been honored by a monument — only the architect of our 
 marvelous Constitution has been forgotten. But he has not 
 been ungenerously forgotten by a noble and grateful people, 
 ever ready to honor all who have served them. For reasons 
 stated already the real facts involved in the life-work of 
 Pelatiah Webster have not heretofore been known; it was 
 the fate of this great man of contemplation to work as it were 
 behind a curtain which, until now, has almost concealed 
 him from the view of the world. To the drawing aside of 
 that curtain your humble petitioner has devoted the best 
 efforts of his life. Unbiased by sectional feeling as a Southern 
 man, unchilled by the scornful coldness of the leaders of 
 thought in New England, who have done what they could 
 to demonstrate that a prophet is not without honor save in 
 his own country and among his own people — ^he has moved 
 steadily on, believing with Langlois that "History is studied 
 from documents. Documents are the traces which have 
 been left by the thoughts and actions of men of former times. 
 
 21 
 
There is no substitute for documents; no documents, no 
 history," By the most explicit and most authentic of all 
 documents, Pelatiah Webster's fame has been fixed for all 
 time. 
 
 Two years after the new Constitution had gone into effect 
 Webster republished at Philadelphia the great document of 
 February 1 6, 1 783, with important notes, in which he explained 
 with perfect clearness the circumstances under which it had 
 been written. In the notes, he says: "I was then pretty 
 much at leisure, and was fully of opinion (though the 
 sentiment at that time would not very well bear) that it 
 would be ten times easier to form a new constitution than 
 to mend the old one. I therefore sat myself down to sketch 
 out the leading principles of that political consitution which 
 I thought necessary to the preservation and happiness of 
 the United States of America, which are comprised in this 
 dissertation. I hope the reader will please consider that 
 these are the original thoughts of a private individual, dic- 
 tated by the nature of the subject only, long before the import- 
 ant theme became the great object of discussion in the most 
 dignified and important assembly which ever sat or decided in 
 America." He then says: "I wish here to remark the great 
 particulars of my plan which were rejected by the Ginven- 
 tion." Among them special prominence is given to the rejec- 
 tion by the Convention of his pet hobby involving the creation 
 of a department of commerce in close touch with Congress. 
 "I therefore humbly propose, if the merchants in the several 
 States are disposed to send delegates from their body, to 
 meet and attend the sittings of Congress, that they shall be 
 permitted to form a Chamber of Commerce, and their advice 
 to Congress be demanded and admitted concerning all bills 
 before Congress, as far as the same may affect the trade of the 
 
 22 
 
States." Thus looking ahead, great merchant as he was, he 
 announced the idea finally embodied a century later in the 
 Department of Commerce recently created. 
 
 The last words of the famous paper of February 16, 1783, 
 are these: "I have not the vanity to imagine that my senti- 
 ments may be adopted; I shall have all the reward I wish 
 or expect if my dissertation shall throw any light on the 
 great subject, shall excite an emulation of inquiry and 
 animate some abler genius to form a plan of greater perfec- 
 tion, less objectionable and more useful." The last words 
 of the notes appended to the republication of 1 791 , are these: 
 "But if any of these questions should in future time become 
 objects of discussion, neither the vast dignity of the Conven- 
 tion, nor the low, unnoticed state of myself, will be at all 
 considered in the debates; the merits of the matter and the 
 interests cormected with or arising out of it will alone dictate 
 the decision." Such was the appeal made by the architect 
 of our existing Constitution to the tribunal of history for 
 justice. As an epoch-making mind can only be viewed in all 
 its grandeur through the vista of receding years, it is not 
 at all likely that the world of our time, which "resents any 
 attempt to show that it has fallen into an error," will admit 
 the real magnitude of the work achieved by this marvellous 
 American statesman and patriot. And yet there is a dis- 
 position to do something. The venerable representative of 
 the family of Pelatiah Webster, Pelatiah Webster Huntington 
 of Columbus, Ohio, was invited to personate the great archi- 
 tect in the feimous "Historical Pageant of 1912," at Philadel- 
 phia, where he marched between John Adams and Thomas 
 Jefferson. Your petitioner therefore hopes and believes that 
 the time has arrived when the Congress of the United States, 
 the first two-chamber Federal assembly in all history, will 
 
 23 
 
be willing to pause for a moment in order to do honor to the 
 genius who designed it. As to that fact there can be neither 
 cavil, doubt, nor question. Your petitioner therefore prays the 
 Congress, first, that on February 16, 1914, it will order this 
 petition to be read in each House and then published in the 
 Congressional Record, to the end that the people of the United 
 States may better understand the facts involved in the life- 
 work of one surely destined to stand out in the time to come 
 as one of the foremost founders of the Republic; second, that 
 this petition be then referred, in each House, to an appro- 
 priate Committee, who shall be directed to inquire whether 
 a tablet, or some other appropriate memorial, should be 
 erected in or near the Capitol in commemoration of the 
 services of one who has contributed so much not only to 
 our honor and glory but to the politics of the world. All of 
 which is humbly submitted by 
 
 HANNIS TAYLOR, 
 
 Petitioner. 
 
 24 
 
PRESS- OF 
 
 GiBSON BROTHERS 
 
 INCORPORAtED 
 
6oTH Congress, ) SENATE. j Document 
 
 1st Session. j ( No. 461. 
 
 IN BEHALF OF THE ARCHITECT OF 
 OUR FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 
 
 Pelatiah Webster 
 
 of Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Presented by Mr. Carter, May 4, 1908.— Ordered to be printed. 
 
Author's Note. 
 
 Herem is reprinted, for the first time in ii6 years, 
 the epoch-making paper published by Pelatiah Webster 
 at Philadelphia, February i6th, 1783, and there repub- 
 lished with notes in 1791, in which he announced to the 
 world, as his invention, the entire plan of the existing 
 Constitution of the United States, worked out in detail 
 more than four years before the Federal Convention of 
 1787 met. 
 
 HANNIS TAYLOR. 
 
To the Congress of the United States: 
 
 The purpose of this memorial is twofold: First, to place 
 in the hands of Congress the data for a new and pivotal 
 chapter in the history of the Constitution that will impress 
 upon succeeding generations the all-important fact that 
 every basic principle which differentiates our existing 
 Federal system from all that have preceded it was a part of 
 a single invention struck off at a given time by the brain 
 and purpose of one man; second, to press upon Congress 
 the long neglected duty of honoring, by an appropriate 
 monument, the memory of an American statesman and 
 patriot who has made a larger personal contribution to the 
 science of government than any other one individual in the 
 history of mankind. From the data thus presented it clearly 
 appears, that among our nation builders Pelatiah Webster 
 stands second to Washington alone. All the world under- 
 stands in a vague and general way that certain path-breaking 
 principles entered into the structure of our second Federal 
 Constitution of 1789 which differentiate it from all other 
 systems of federal government that have preceded it. 
 M, de Tocqueville gave formal expression to that under- 
 standing when he said : " This Constitution, which may at 
 first be confounded with federal constitutions that have 
 preceded it, rests in truth upon a wholly novel theory which 
 may be considered a great discovery in modern political 
 science. In the confederations that preceded the American 
 Constitution of 1789, the allied states, for a common object, 
 agreed to obey the injunctions of a federal government; but 
 they reserved to themselves the right of ordaining and 
 enforcing the execution of the laws of the Union. The 
 American States, which combined in 1789, agreed that the 
 federal government should not only dictate, but should 
 
 (5) 
 
6 
 
 execute its own enactments. In both cases the right is the 
 same, but the exercise of the right is different; and this 
 difference produced the most momentous consequences."* 
 Mr. Gladstone simply reiterated that idea when he said: 
 "As the British Constitution is the most subtile organism 
 which has proceeded from progressive history, so the 
 American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever 
 struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." 
 That master of the history of English institutions perfectly 
 understood that as our state constitutions are mere repro- 
 ductions, mere evolutions from the English political system, 
 so our second federal constitution is a new invention "struck 
 off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." 
 
 That invention of a new type of federal government, 
 embodying, as Tocqueville said, " a wholly novel theory," 
 is so unique that it can no more be confounded with any 
 preceding federal government than a modern mogul engine 
 can be confounded with an ancient stage coach. Did that 
 wonderful invention, which has produced such momentous 
 consequences, have a personal author, like all other inven- 
 tions ; or was it revealed at the same moment, and in some 
 mysterious way, to a large number of persons, thinking and 
 acting in isolation? Upon that humanely impossible or 
 miraculous theory historians of our existing constitution 
 have attempted to explain the origin of the unique and pre- 
 arranged plan of federal government presented to the Con- 
 vention which sat at Philadelphia during the 125 days that 
 intervened between May 14 and September 17, 1787. After 
 deducting recesses and holidays, there could not have been 
 more than 90 working days. No one has ever contended, or 
 can ever contend, that the great invention in question was 
 made after the Convention met, for the simple and conclusive 
 reason that it was the basis of all the "plans" save one, 
 carefully constructed beforehand, out of which the Con- 
 stitution was evolved. Five and only five "plans," all 
 
 * Democracy in America, vol. i, pp. 198, 199. 
 
prearranged, were submitted to the Convention, viz, the 
 Virginia plan, the Charles Pinckney plan, the Connecticut 
 plan, the Alexander Hamilton plan, and the New Jersey 
 plan. As the last only proposed a revision of the Articles 
 of Confederation it may be dismissed from consideration. 
 There were but four plans in which proposals for a new 
 system of federal government were embodied, each resting 
 upon the "wholly novel theory" which has produced "the 
 most momentous consequences." 
 
 A distinguished specialist has well said that "the Virginia 
 plan became the rock-bed of the Constitution.* That plan, 
 which, embodied perfectly every phase of the great invention, 
 was drafted by Madison, who began his preparation for the 
 labors of the Convention at least a year before it met.f 
 In December, 1786, we find him in active correspondence 
 with Jefferson, then at Paris, as to the Virginia plan.J 
 The marvel is that the historians who are supposed to have 
 explored the sources have never taken the pains to ask this 
 simple and inevitable question — From what common source 
 did the draftsmen of the four plans draw the path-breaking 
 invention which was the foundation of all of them? Let it be 
 said to the honor of those draftsmen that no one of them 
 ever claimed to be the author of that invention. Neither 
 Madison, nor Charles Pinckney, nor Sherman, nor BUsworth, 
 nor Hamilton, nor any of their biographers, so far as the 
 writer is informed, ever set up such a claim in behalf of any 
 one of them. The answer to "the simple and inevitable 
 question " just propounded is this : The common source from 
 which the draftsmen of the four plans drew the path-breaking 
 invention underlying them all was "A Dissertation on the 
 Political Union and Constitution of the thirteen United 
 States of North America," published at Philadelphia by 
 
 * Meigs, The Growth of the Constitution in the Federal Convention 0/1787, p. 17. 
 
 fSee Rives' Life and Times of Madison, vol. ii, p. 208, "Preparations of Madison 
 for labors of Federal Convention." 
 
 JSee letter of Jefferson to Madison of December 16, 1786, va. Jefferson'' s Corre- 
 spondence, by T. J. Randolph, vol. ii, pp. 64, 65. 
 
Pelatiah Webster, February i6, 1783, and tbere republisbed 
 by bim witb copious notes in 1791, and herein reproduced 
 for tbe first time after tbe lapse of 116 years. In tbat 
 immortal paper, wbose lightest words are weighty, be gave 
 to tbe world, as his personal contribution to the science of 
 government, and as an entirety worked out in great detail tbe 
 "wboUy novel theory" of federal government upon which 
 reposes the existing Constitution of tbe United States, 
 
 Prior to the date in question no single element of that 
 theory had ever been propounded by anyone. In a note 
 appended to tbe republication of 1791 the great inventor 
 gives the following account of tbe circumstances under 
 which the invention was made: "At the time when this 
 Dissertation was written (February 16, 1783) the defects and 
 insufficiency of the Old Federal Constitution were universally 
 felt and acknowledged; it was manifest, not only that the 
 internal police, justice, security, and peace of the States 
 could never be preserved under it, but the finances and 
 public credit would necessarily become so embarrassed, 
 precarious, and void of support, that no public movement, 
 which depended on tbe revenue, could be managed with any 
 effectual certainty: but tho' the public mind was under full 
 conviction of all these mischiefs, and was contemplating a 
 remedy, YET THE public IDEAS WERE NOT AT ALL CONCEN- 
 TRATED, MUCH LESS ARRANGED INTO ANY NEW SYSTEM OR 
 
 FORM OE GOVERNMENT, which wotild obviate these evils. 
 Under these circumstances, I offered this Dissertation to the 
 public: how far the principles of it were adopted or rejected 
 in tbe New Constitution, which was four years afterwards 
 (Sept. 17, 1787) formed by the General Convention, and since 
 ratified by all the States, is obvious to every one." 
 
 At the same time he added : " I was fully of opinion (tho' 
 the sentiment at tbat time would not very well bear) tbat it 
 would be ten times easier to form a new Constitution than 
 to mend the old one. I therefore sat myself down to sketch 
 out the leading principles of that political Constitution, which 
 
I thought necessary to the preservation and happiness of 
 the United States of America, which are comprised in this 
 Dissertation. I hope the reader will please to consider that 
 these are the original thoughts of a private individual, dic- 
 tated by the nature of the subject only, long before the 
 important theme became the great object of discussion in 
 the most dignified and important assembly which ever sat or 
 decided in America." The great inventor perfectly under- 
 stood the merits of his own case which he thus stated with 
 the lucidity of a Greek and the terseness of a Roman. As 
 early as 1781 Pelatiah Webster was the first to propose to the 
 people of the United States, in one of his financial essays 
 published at Philadelphia in May of that year, the calling 
 of "a Continental Convention" for the making of a new 
 Constitution.* In bearing testimony to that fact, Madison 
 said that Pelatiah Webster, "after discussing the fiscal 
 system of the United States, and suggesting, among other 
 remedial provisions, one including a national bank, remarks, 
 that 'the authority of Congress is very inadequate to the 
 performance of their duties ; and this indicates the necessity 
 of their calling a Continental Convention for the express 
 purpose of ascertaining, defining, enlarging, and limiting 
 the duties and powers of their Constitution.' "f Two years 
 after he had thus sounded the tocsin for the States to assem- 
 ble he made the invention and published to the world, in 
 detail, the plan upon which the Constitution was to be 
 formed. While the historian Bancroft { failed to appreciate 
 the stupendous importance of his work, he frankly admits 
 that he actually performed it when he says : " The public 
 mind was ripening for a transition from a confederation to 
 a real government. Just at this time Pelatiah Webster, a 
 
 *The fact that "Alexander Hamilton made the same suggestion in a private 
 letter to James Duane, September 3, 1780," is of no importance. It was not a 
 public act, not even a public declaration. See Gaillard Hunt.'s "Ivifeof James 
 Madison," p. 108. 
 
 fXhe Madison Papers (1841), vol. ii, pp. 706-7. 
 
 { History of the Constitution of the United States, vol. i, p. 86. 
 
lO 
 
 graduate of Yale College, in a dissertation published at 
 Philadelphia, proposed for the legislature of the United 
 States a congress of two houses which should have ample 
 authority for making laws 'of general necessity and utility,' 
 and enforcing them as well on individuals as on States. , He 
 further suggested not only heads of executive departments, 
 but judges of law and chancery. The tract awakened so 
 much attention that it was reprinted in Hartford, and called 
 forth a reply."* In both of the scanty and stingy biograph- 
 ical notices of him in the leading American encyclopaedias, 
 the st9,tement is made that his plan " is mentioned by James 
 Madison as having an influence in directing the public mind 
 to the necessity of a better form of government." Pelatiah 
 Webster needs the admissions neither of Madison nor Ban- 
 croft to establish his title to the authorship of the "wholly 
 novel theory" now embodied in the Constitution of the 
 United States, because that title rests upon contemporary 
 documentary evidence as clear and convincing as that upon 
 which rests Jefferson's title to the authorship of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. If that be true, then he has made a 
 larger personal contribution to the science of government 
 than any other one individual in the history of mankind. 
 Among our nation-builders he stands second to Washington 
 alone. 
 
 And yet among them all he only has been neglected and 
 forgotten by his countrymen, not through any conscious 
 omission, but because of a careless historical scholarship 
 which has failed to present his great achievement in its true 
 light. That conviction has impelled the undersigned — who 
 has devoted more than thirty years to the special study of 
 the origin and growth of our constitutional systems, State 
 and Federal — to present to the Congress herein, very briefly, 
 the historical data upon which Pelatiah Webster's right to 
 immortality depends. He it was who first suggested the 
 separate existence of the two Houses of Congress, when, in 
 
 *It was replied to anonymously by Roger Stennan. 
 
II 
 
 1783, lie said, "That the Congress shall consist of two Cham- 
 bers, an Upper and Lower House, or Senate and Com'mons, 
 with the concurrence of both necessary to every act; and 
 that every State send one or more delegates to each House : 
 this will subject every act to two discussions before two 
 distinct chambers of men equally qualified for the debate, 
 equally masters of the subject, and of equal authority in the 
 decision." * 
 
 Prior to that utterance no Federal Assembly, ancient or 
 modern, had ever consisted of two chambers; no one had 
 ever suggested such an idea. If after a careful examination 
 of all the facts the Congress shall deem the architect of our 
 Federal Constitution unworthy of a monument, the under- 
 signed prays in his behalf that this humble memorial may 
 be embodied in its records so that succeeding generations 
 may determine for themselves whether or no his work has 
 been justly judged. 
 
 I. 
 
 FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS PRIOR TO AND INCLUDING THAT 
 
 OF 1776. 
 
 From the days of the Greek Leagues down to the making 
 of the second constitution of the United States, all federal 
 governments had been constructed on a single plan at once 
 clumsy and ineflEicient. The most perfect of the Greek 
 Leagues was the Achaian, of which the framers really knew 
 nothing, as we learn from Madison who tells us in the Feder- 
 alist (xviii) that "could the interior structure and regular 
 operation of the Achaian League be ascertained, it is probable 
 that more light might be thrown by it on the science of 
 federal government than by any like experiments with which 
 we are acquainted." The coveted knowledge was not acces- 
 sible because the historical scholars who have since passed 
 beyond the Greece of Thucydides into the Greece of Poly bios, 
 who have passed beyond the period in which the independent 
 
 *The italics in all the quotations from Pelatiah Webster's paper are his own. 
 
12 
 
 city-commonwealth, was the dominant political idea into the 
 later and less brilliant period of Hellenic freedom occupied 
 by the history of Greek frederalism, had not then completed 
 their investigations, only fully worked out in very recent 
 years.* Such scanty knowledge as the framers did possess 
 of Greek federalism seems to have been chiefly drawn from 
 the little work of the Abb6 Mably, Observations sur VHis- 
 toire de Gr&ce (Federalist, xviii). The only federal govern- 
 ments witb whose internal organizations the builders of our 
 Federal Republic were really familiar, and whose histories 
 had any practical effect upon their work, were those that had 
 grown up between the I^ow-Dutch communities at the 
 mouth of the Rhine, and between the High-Dutch communi- 
 ties in the mountains of Switzerland, and upon the plains of 
 Germany (Federalist, xix, xx). Down to the making of the 
 second constitution of the United States, the Confederation 
 of Swiss Cantons, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, 
 and the German Confederation really represented the total 
 advance made by the modern world in the structure of federal 
 governments. 
 
 Such advance was embodied in the idea of a federal system 
 made up of a union of states, cities or districts, representa- 
 tives from which composed a single federal assembly whose 
 limited powers could be brought to bear, not upon individual 
 citizens, but only upon cities or states as such. The funda- 
 mental principle upon which all such fabrics rested was the 
 requisition system, under which the federal assembly was 
 only endowed with the power to make requisitions for men 
 and money upon the states or cities composing the league 
 for federal purposes, while the states, alone, in their corporate 
 capacity possessed the power to execute them. The initial 
 effort of the English colonies in America along the path 
 of federal union ended with the making of the first consti- 
 tution of the United States embodied in the Articles of 
 
 *T}ie first volume (History of Greek Federations) of Edward A. Freeman's great 
 History of Federal Government was not published until 1863. 
 
13 
 
 Confederation. Up to that point nothing new had been 
 achieved; the fruit of the first effort was simply a confedera- 
 tion, constructed upon a plan over two thousand years old, 
 which could only deal through the requisition system with 
 states as states. That confederation possessed no power 
 (i) to operate directly upon the individual citizen; (2) it 
 had no independent power of taxation; (3) the federal 
 head was not divided into three departments — executive, 
 legislative, and judicial; (4) the federal assembly consisted 
 of one chamber instead of two.* The lack of power to levy 
 and collect for itself federal or national taxes rendered our 
 first Federal Government preeminently a failure as a finan- 
 cial system, dependent as it was upon the will of thirteen 
 independent legislatures. 
 
 II. 
 
 PELATIAH WEBSTER'S INVENTION AND THE SECOND 
 FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF 1787. 
 
 The most scientific writer upon finance during the Revo- 
 lutionary War was Pelatiah Webster, whose essays on that 
 subject fill a volume.f He was born at Lebanon, Connecticut, 
 in 1725, and graduated at Yale College in 1746. In 1755 
 he removed to Philadelphia, where he became a prosperous 
 merchant, and in due time an ardent supporter of the 
 patriot cause in the War of the Revolution, aiding with 
 pen and purse. He was captured by the British, and, on 
 account of his ardor was imprisoned for four months. As 
 early as October, 1776, he began to write on the currency, 
 and in 1779 he commenced the publication at Philadelphia 
 of a series of " Essays on Free Trade and Finance." He was 
 sufficiently important as a political economist to be con- 
 sulted by the Continental Congress as to the resources of 
 the country. His financial studies soon convinced him that 
 
 * See Pelatiah Webster's masterful analysis of the first Constitution contained in 
 his Notes published in 1791, infra, p. 48. 
 
 fThe second edition of 1791 was "Printed and sold by Joseph Crukshank, 
 No. 91, High Street," Philadelphia. 
 
14 
 
 no stable fiscal system could be established until tbe then 
 existing federal government was wiped out and superseded 
 by one endowed with independent taxing power. There- 
 fore, as early as 1 781, in one of his financial essays, he made 
 the first public call for the "Continental Convention," 
 referred to by Madison, to be armed with power to devise 
 an adequate system of federal government. Having thus 
 taken the first step, he set himself to work to formulate in 
 advance such an adequate system as the Convention should 
 adopt, whenever it might meet. In the great tract published 
 at Philadelphia, February 16, 1783, we have photographed 
 for us the workings of his mind as he moved along paths 
 never trod before. He sounded the keynote when he 
 declared: "They (the supreme power) must therefore of 
 necessity be vested with a power of taxation. I know this is 
 a most important and weighty truth, a dreadful engine of 
 oppression, tyranny, and injury, when ill used; yet, from the 
 necessity of the case, it must be admitted. 
 
 "For to give a supreme authority a power of making con- 
 tracts, without any power oi payment ; of appointing officers, 
 civil and military, without money to pay them; power to build 
 ships, without any money to do it with; a power of emitting 
 money, without any power to redeem it; or of borrowing 
 money, without any power to make payment, etc. — such 
 solecisms in government are so nugatory and absurd that 
 I really think to offer further argument on the subject would 
 be to insult the understanding of my readers. To make all 
 these payments dependent on the votes of thirteen popular 
 assemblies, who will undertake to judge of the propriety of 
 every contract and every occasion of money, and grant or 
 withhold supplies according to their opinion, whilst at the 
 same time the operation of the whole may be stopped by the 
 vote of a single one of them, is absurd." Thus Pelatiah 
 Webster proposed the existing system of federal taxation, 
 then entirely new, to the world ; thus he proposed that the 
 ancient system of requisitions, resting on the taxing power 
 
15 
 
 of the states, should be superseded by a system of federal or 
 national taxation extending to every citizen, directly or indi- 
 rectly. Instead of the lifeless system of absurdity embodied 
 in the Articles of Confederation, he proposed to substitute a 
 self-executing and self-sustaining national system, based on 
 the following propositions, stated in his own language : " The 
 supreme authority of any State must have power enough to 
 affect the ends of its appointment^ otherwise these ends cannot 
 be answered and effectually secured. * * * j ^ggiu ^^\;Ca. 
 my first and great principle, viz. That the Constitution must 
 vest powers in every department sufficient to secure aud make 
 effectual the ends of it. The supreme authority must have 
 the power of making war and peace — of appointing armies 
 and navies — of appointing officers both civil and military — 
 of making contracts — of emitting., coining.^ and borrowing 
 money — of regulating trade — of making treaties with foreign 
 powers — of establishing /<9jA(?^(:^^ — and, in short, of doing 
 everything which the well-being of the Commonwealth may 
 require, and which is not computable to any particular State, 
 all of which require money, and cannot possibly be made 
 effectual without it. * * * This tax can be laid by the 
 supreme authority much more conveniently than by the 
 particular Assemblies, and would in no case be siibject to 
 their repeals or modifications ; and of course the public credit 
 would never be dependent on, or liable to bankruptcy by the 
 humors of, any particular assembly. * * * 'j^j^g dele- 
 gates which are to form that august body, which are to hold 
 and exercise the supreme authority, ought to be appointed 
 by the States in any manner they please.^'' In formulating 
 his conclusions as to the supremacy of federal law acting 
 directly on all citizens, he said: "(i) No laws of any State 
 whatever which do not carry in them a force which extends 
 to their effectual and final execution can afford a certain or 
 sufficient security to the subject — this is too plain to need 
 proof; (2) Laws or ordinances of any kind (especially of 
 august bodies of high dignity and consequence), which fail 
 
i6 
 
 of execution, are much worse than none; they weaken the 
 government; expose it to contempt. * * * ^ govern- 
 ment wliicli is but half executed, or whose operations may 
 all be stopped by a single vote, is the most dangerous of all 
 institutions. * * * 
 
 " Further, I propose that if the execution of any act or order 
 of the supreme authority shall be opposed by force in any of 
 the States (which God forbid !) it shall be lawful for Congress 
 to send into such State a sufficient force to suppress it. On 
 the whole, I take it that the very existence and use of our 
 union effectually depends on the full energy and final effect 
 of the laws made to support it; and therefore I sacrifice all 
 other considerations to this energy and effect; and if our Union 
 is not worth this purchase we must give it up — the nature 
 of the thing does not admit any other alternative." In these 
 ringing terms was announced the path-breaking invention 
 of a supreme and self-executing federal government oper- 
 ating directly upon the citizen ; an invention for which the 
 world had been waiting for two thousand years ; an inven- 
 tion of which no trace or hint is to be found in the constitutions 
 of any of the Teutonic Leagues, in the Articles of Confederal- 
 tion, or in the prior utterance of any other man. 
 
 Having thus defined his fundamental concept of a federal 
 government operating directly on the citizen, the great one 
 boldly accepted the inevitable corollary that such a govern- 
 ment must be strictly organized and equipped with machin- 
 ery adequate to its ends — with the usual branches, executive, 
 legislative, and judicial; with its army, its navy, its civil 
 service, and all the usual apparatus of a government, all 
 bearing directly upon every citizen of the Union without 
 any reference to the government of the several States. No 
 such federal government, ancient or modern, had ever existed. 
 As Montesquieu was the first to point out, the division of 
 state powers into executive, legislative, and judicial, origi- 
 nated in that single state in Britain we call England.* 
 
 * Spirit of Laws, bk. xi, ch. 6. 
 
17 
 
 From that single state the principle passed into the single 
 States of the American Union.* Pelatiah Webster was the 
 first to conceive of the application of the principle of the 
 division of powers to a federal state; he was the first to pro- 
 pose that the federal head should be divided and then 
 organized, as the particular ones are, into legislative, execu- 
 tive, and judicial. More than three years later Jefferson 
 endorsed that idea by commending it to Madison.f Having 
 thus made his second great invention, Webster proceeded 
 to explain how the three departments, executive, legislative, 
 and judicial, should be organized. His idea was that the 
 executive power should be vested in a council of ministers 
 to be grouped around a President elected by Congress. On 
 that subject he said: "These ministers will of course have 
 the best information, and most perfect knowledge, of the 
 state of the Nation, as far as it relates to their several depart- 
 ments, and will of course be able to give the best information 
 to Congress, in what manner any bill proposed will affect 
 the public interest in their several departments, which will 
 nearly comprehend the whole. The Financier manages the 
 whole subject of the revenues and expenditures ; the Secretary 
 of State takes knowledge of the general policy and internal 
 government; the Minister of War presides in the whole 
 business of war and defence; and the Minister of Foreign 
 A^ffairs regards the whole state of the Nation, as it stands 
 related to, or connected with, all foreign powers. * * * 
 I would further propose, that the aforesaid great ministers 
 of state shall compose a Council of State, to whose number 
 Congress may add three others, viz : one from New England, 
 one from the Middle States and one from the Southern 
 States, one of which to be appointed President by Congress.''"' 
 To the organization of the legislative department Webster 
 gave elaborate consideration. Just as no prior federal gov- 
 ernment had ever been divided into three departments, so 
 
 * Federalist, xlvi. 
 
 ■fin the letter written from Paris, December i6, 1786, heretofore cited. 
 
i8 
 
 no prior federal legislature liad ever been divided into two 
 houses. 
 
 The one-chamber body represented by the Continental 
 Congress was the type of every other federal assembly that 
 had ever preceded it. As stated heretofore the path-breaker, 
 looking to the English bicameral system as it had appeared 
 in the several States, proposed "That the Congress shall con- 
 sist of two chambers^ an upper and lower house, or senate and 
 commons^ with the concurrence of both necessarv to every act; 
 and that every State send one or more delegates to each house : 
 this will subject every act to two discussions before two dis- 
 tinct chambers of men equally qualified for the debate, equally 
 masters of the subject, and of equal authority in the decision." 
 Citizens of the United States, to whom such a division now 
 seems a matter of course, should remember that when 
 Webster proposed it, it was an unprecedented novelty in the 
 history of the world, so far as federal legislatures are con- 
 cerned. After an elaborate discussion of the qualifications 
 of members of Congress, in which he sharply assailed the 
 then existing rule forbidding their reelection, he proceeded 
 to define a part of the original jurisdiction of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States by sajdng "that the supreme 
 authority should be vested with powers to terminate and 
 finally decide controversies arising between different States." 
 He also said "To these I would add judges of law and 
 chancery." Thus the entire federal judicial system was dis- 
 tinctly outlined. Above all he was careful to define the 
 reserved powers of the States. On that subject he said: 
 " I propose further, that the powers of Congress, and all the 
 other departments acting under them, shall all be restricted 
 to such matters only of general necessity and utility to all the 
 States, as cannot come within the jurisdiction of any particu- 
 lar State, or to which the authority of any particular State is 
 not competent: so that each particular State shall enjoy all 
 sovereignty and supreme authority to all intents and pur- 
 poses, excepting only those high authorities and powers by 
 
19 
 
 them delegated to Congress, for the purposes of the general 
 union." In that passage we have the first draft, and a very- 
 complete one, of the Tenth Amendment.* So it is a matter 
 of documentary evidence that every element that entered into 
 the "wholly novel theory, which may be considered a great 
 discovery in modem political science," and which differen- 
 tiaties our second federal constitution of 1789 from every 
 other that preceded it, was the deliberate invention of Pelatiah 
 Webster^ who announced to the world that theory, as an 
 entirety^ in his epoch-making paper of February 16, 1783. 
 Prior to that date no federal government had ever existed 
 (i) that operated directly on the individual citizen; (2) no 
 federal government had ever been divided into three depart- 
 ments, executive, legislative, and judicial; (3) no federal 
 legislature had ever been divided into an upper and lower 
 house. There is no record, there is not even a claim that, 
 prior to that date, any human being had ever propounded 
 anyone of those principles in connection with a federal gov- 
 ernment. The great inventor was so conscious at the time 
 of the magnitude of his undertaking that he exclaimed as 
 he wrote: 
 
 "May Almighty wisdom direct m,y pen in this arduous dis- 
 cussion." In conclusion he said: "This vast subject lies 
 with mighty weight on my mind, and I have bestowed on it 
 my utmost attention, and here offer the public the best 
 thoughts and sentiments I am master of . * * * I have not the 
 vanity to imagine that my sentiments may be adopted; I 
 shall have all the reward I wish or expect if my Dissertation 
 shall throw any light on the great subject, shall excite an 
 emulation of inquiry, and animate some abler genius to form 
 a plan of greater perfection, less objectionable, and more 
 useful." In his republication of 1791 he described perfectly 
 the circumstances under which the great invention of Feb- 
 ruary 16, 1783, was made, when he said that, "the public 
 
 *It provides that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Con- 
 stitution, nor prohibited by it to tije States, are reserved to the States respectively 
 or to the people." 
 
20 
 
 ideas were not at all concentrated, much less arranged into 
 any new system or form of government, wliich would obviate 
 these evils. Under these circumstances I offered this Dis- 
 sertation to the public." In that Dissertation, Pelatiah 
 Webster presented, as a free gift to the great country that 
 has neglected and forgotten him, the " new system or form 
 of government" which passed, through the four ''■plans''''* 
 offered in the Federal Convention of 1787, into the existing 
 Constitution of the United States. Certainly no more 
 "wonderful work was ever struck off at a given time by the 
 brain and purpose of man." The outcome of that work was 
 a novel and unique creation operating directly on the people, 
 and not upon the States as corporations. The State govern- 
 ments are not subject to the central government. The 
 people are subject to both governments. The new creation 
 is in no respect federal in its operation^ although it is in 
 some respects federal in its organization. No one of the 
 three basic principles constituting the great invention was 
 seriously questioned in the Convention. Its mighty and 
 immortal task involved only their adaptation to very difficult 
 and complex political conditions. The inventor of the plan 
 stands to the members of the Convention as an architect 
 stands to master builders. 
 
 As an evidence of the highly practical temper of Pelatiah 
 Webster the fact should be mentioned in conclusion that, 
 having been a successful merchant, his pet hobby seems to 
 have been to create a Department of Commerce in close 
 touch with Congress. He said: "I therefore humbly pro- 
 pose, if the merchants in the several States are disposed to 
 send delegates from their body, to meet and attend the sitting 
 of Congress, that they shall be permitted to form a chamber 
 
 *At a later time a grave controversy arose as to "the singularly minute coinci- 
 dences between the draft of a Federal government communicated by Mr. Charles 
 Pinckney of South Carolina, to Mr. Adams, Secretary of State," the Virginia plan, 
 and the Constitution as finally adopted. Every explanation was given of "the 
 singularly minute coincidences," except the plain and obvious one — the four plans 
 out of which the Constitution arose were taken from a common source. For a 
 statement of the controversy in question see Rives' Life and Times of Madison, 
 vol. ii, pp. 353-357- 
 
ai 
 
 of commerce^ and their advice to Congress be demanded and 
 admitted concerning all bills before Congress, as far as the 
 same may affect the trade of the States ^ In bis criticisms 
 made in 1791 of the work of tbe Federal Convention be said 
 that its failure to accept that suggestion was a great mistake. 
 The very recent creation of a Department of Commerce and 
 Labor has at last effectuated his idea. Only through the 
 vista of receding years can such an epoch-making mind be 
 viewed in all its grandeur. What signifies a century of 
 neglect passed in the midst of the "momentous conse- 
 quences" his mighty work has wrought! His time is at 
 hand ; his fame is as safe and as certain as the immortality 
 of thought and the unerring justice of the tribunal of history. 
 His abiding faith in the justice of that tribunal he clearly 
 expressed when he said: "But if any of these questions 
 should in future time become objects of discussion, neither 
 the vast dignity of the Convention^ nor the low unnoticed 
 state of myself , will be at all considered in the debates; the 
 merits of the matter, and the interests connected with or 
 arising out of it will alone dictate the decision." 
 
 The humanly impossible and miraculous theory which 
 has heretofore serenely assumed that the greatest and most 
 unique of all political inventions had no inventor, can not 
 survive a method of historical investigations that under- 
 takes to demonstrate that beneath every shell there is an 
 animal, behind every document there is a man. The emi- 
 nent French critic and historian Ch. V. Langlais has said : 
 "History is studied from documents. Documents are the 
 traces which have been left by the thoughts and actions of 
 men of former times. There is no substitute for documents: 
 no documents, no history." Strange indeed it is that the 
 most important document connected with our Constitutional 
 history should now be presented to the jurists and statesmen 
 of the United States as if it were a papyrus from Egypt or 
 Herculaneum, 
 
 Humbly presented by 
 
 Hannis Tayi^or. 
 
III. 
 
 THE EPOCH-MAKING DOCUMENT OF FEBRUARY 16, 1783, IN 
 WHICH IS EMBODIED THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE EXIST- 
 ING CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: 
 
 A 
 
 DISSERTATION 
 
 ON THE 
 
 POLI TIC AL UNION 
 
 AND 
 
 CONSTITUTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 THIRTEEN UNITED STATES 
 
 OF 
 
 NOR TH AMERICA, 
 
 which is necessary to their Preservation and Happiness; 
 humbly offered to the Public. 
 
 {Pirst published in Philadelphia^ ^7^3-) 
 
 I. The supreme autliority of any State must have power 
 enough to effect the ends of its appointment, otherwise these 
 ends cannot be answered, and effectually secured; at best 
 they are precarious. — But at the same time, 
 
 II. The supreme authority ought to be so limited and 
 checked, if possible, as to prevent the abuse of power, or the 
 exercise of powers that are not necessary to the ends of its 
 appointment, but hurtful and oppressive to the subject; but 
 to limit a supreme authority so far as to diminish its dignity, 
 or lessen its power of doing good, would be to destroy or at 
 least to corrupt it, and render it ineffectual to its ends. 
 
 (23) 
 
24 
 
 III. A number of sovereign States uniting into one Com- 
 monwealth, and appointing a supreme power to manage tlie 
 affairs of tlie Union, do necessarily and unavoidably part 
 with and transfer over to sucb supreme power, so much of 
 their own sovereignty as is necessary to render the ends of 
 the union effectual, otherwise their confederation will be an 
 union without bands of union, like a cask without hoops, 
 that may and probably will fall to pieces, as soon as it is 
 put to any exercise which requires strength. 
 
 In like manner, every member of civil society parts with 
 many of his natural rights, that he may enjoy the rest in 
 greater security under the protection of society. 
 
 The Union of the Thirteen States of America is of mighty 
 consequence to the security, sovereignty, and even liberty of 
 each of them, and of all the individuals who compose them; 
 united under a natural, well adjusted, and effectual Consti- 
 tution, they are a strong, rich, growing power, with great 
 resources and means of defence, which no foreign power 
 will easily attempt to invade or insult; they may easily 
 command respect. 
 
 As their exports are mostly either raw materials or pro- 
 visions, and their imports mostly finished goods, their trade 
 becomes a capital object with every manufacturing nation of 
 Burope, and all the southern colonies of America; their 
 friendship and trade will of course be courted, and each 
 power in amity with them will contribute to their security. 
 
 Their union is of great moment in another respect; they 
 thereby form a superintending power among themselves, 
 that can moderate and terminate disputes that may arise 
 between different States, restrain intestine violence, and 
 prevent any recourse to the dreadful decision of the sword. 
 
 I do not mean here to go into a detail of all the advantages 
 of our union; they offer themselves on every view, and are 
 important enough to engage every honest, prudent mind, to 
 secure and establish that union by every possible method, 
 that we may enjoy the full benefit of it, and be rendered 
 happy and safe under the protection it affords. 
 
 This union, however important, cannot be supported 
 without a Constitution founded on principles of natural 
 truth, fitness, and utility. If there is one article wrong in 
 such Constitution, it will discover itself in practice, by its 
 baleful operation, and destroy or at least injure the union. 
 
25 
 
 Many nations liave been ruined by the errors of their 
 political constitutions. Such errors first introduce wrongs 
 and injuries, which soon breed discontents, which gradually 
 work up into mortal hatred and resentments ; hence invet- 
 erate parties are formed, which of course make the whole 
 community a house divided against itself, which soon falls 
 either a prey to some enemies without, who watch to devour 
 them, or else crumble into their original constituent parts, 
 and lose all respectability, strength, and security. 
 
 It is as physically impossible to secure to civil society, good 
 cement of union, duration, and security without a Constitu- 
 tion founded on principles of natural fitness and right, as to 
 raise timbers into a strong, compact building, which have 
 not been framed upon true geometric principles ; for if you 
 cut one beam a foot too long or too short, not all the author- 
 ity and all the force of all the carpenters can ever get it into 
 its place, and make it fit with proper symmetry there. 
 
 As the fate then of all governments depends much upon 
 their political constitutions, they become an object of rtiighty 
 moment to the happiness and well-being of society ; and as 
 the framing of such a Constitution requires great knowledge 
 of the rights of men and societies, as well as of the interests, 
 circumstances, and even prejudices of the several parts of 
 the community or commonwealth, for which it is intended; 
 it becomes a very complex subject, and of course requires 
 great steadiness and comprehension of thought, as well as 
 great knowledge of men and things, to do it properly. I 
 shall, however, attempt it with my best abilities, and hope 
 from the candor of the public to escape censure, if I cannot 
 merit praise. 
 
 I begin with my first and great principle, viz : That the 
 Constitution must vest powers in every department sufficient 
 to secure and make effectual the ends of it. The supreme 
 authority must have the power of making war and peace — 
 of appointing armies and navies — of appointing officers both 
 civil and military — of making contracts — of emitting, coin- 
 ing, and borrowing money — of regulating trade — of making 
 treaties with foreign powers — of establishing post-offices — 
 and in short of doing everything which the well-being of the 
 Commonwealth may require, and which is not compatible to 
 any particular State, all of which require money, and cannot 
 possibly be made effectual without it. 
 
26 
 
 They must therefore of necessity be vested with power of 
 taxation. I know this is a most important and weighty 
 truth, a dreadful engine of oppression, tyranny, and injury, 
 when ill used; yet, from the necessity of the case, it must 
 be admitted. 
 
 For to give a supreme authority a power of making con- 
 tracts, without any power of payment — of appointing officers 
 civil and military, without money to pay them — a power to 
 build ships, without any money to do it with — a power of 
 emitting money, without any power to redeem it — or of bor- 
 rowing money, without any power to make payment, etc., 
 etc. — such solecisms in government are so nugatory and 
 absurd, that I really think to offer further argument on the 
 subject, would be to insult the understanding of my readers. 
 
 To make all these payments dependent on the votes of 
 thirteen popular assemblies, who will undertake to judge of 
 the propriety of every contract and every occasion of money, 
 and grant or withhold supplies, according to their opinion, 
 whilst at the same time the operations of the whole may be 
 stopped by the vote of a single one of them, is absurd; for 
 this renders all supplies so precarious and the public credit 
 so extremely uncertain, as must in its nature render all 
 efforts in war, and all regular administration in peace, utterly 
 impracticable, as well as most pointedly ridiculous. Is there 
 a man to be found who would lend money, or render personal 
 services, or make contracts on such precarious security? Of 
 this we have a proof of fact, the strongest of all proofs, a 
 fatal experience, the surest tho' severest of all demonstra- 
 tion, which renders all other proof or argument on this 
 subject quite unnecessary. 
 
 The present broken state of our finances — public debts 
 and bankruptcies — enormous and ridiculous depreciation of 
 public securities — with the total annihilation of our public 
 credit — prove beyond all contradiction the vanity of all 
 recourse to the federal Assemblies of the States. The recent 
 instance of the duty of 5 per cent on imported goods, struck 
 dead, and the bankruptcies which ensued on the single vote 
 of Rhode Island, affords another proof of what it is certain 
 may be done again in like circumstances. 
 
 I have another reason why a power of taxation or of rais- 
 ing money, ought to be vested in the supreme authority of 
 our commonwealth, viz, the monies necessary for the public 
 
27 
 
 ouglit to be raised by a duty imposed on imported goods, not 
 a bare 5 per cent or any otlier per cent on all imported goods 
 indiscriminately, but a duty much beavier on all articles of 
 luxury or mere ornament, and which are consumed princi- 
 pally by the rich or prodigal part of the community, such as 
 silks of all sorts, muslins, cambricks, lawns, superfine cloths, 
 spirits, wines, etc., etc. 
 
 Such an impost would ease the husbandman, the mechanic, 
 and the poor ; would have all the practical effects of a sumptu- 
 ary law ; would mend the economy, and increase the industry, 
 of the community ; would be collected without the shocking 
 circumstances of collectors and their warrants ; and make the 
 quantity of tax paid, always depend on the choice of the 
 person who pays it. 
 
 This tax can be laid by the supreme authority much more 
 conveniently than by the particular Assemblies, and would 
 in no case be subject to their repeals or modifications ; and 
 of course the public credit would never be dependent on, or 
 liable to bankruptcy by the humors of any particular Assem- 
 bly. In an Bssay on Finance, which I design soon to offer 
 to the public, this subject will be treated more fully. (See 
 my Sixth Bssay on Free Trade and Finance, p. 229.) 
 
 The delegates which are to form that august body, which 
 are to hold and exercise the su.preme authority, ought to be 
 appointed by the States in any manner they please ; in which 
 they should not be limited by any restrictions ; their own 
 dignity and the weight they will hold in the great public 
 councils, will always depend on the abilities of the persons 
 they appoint to represent them there ; and if they are wise 
 enough to choose men of sufficient abilities, and respectable 
 characters, men of sound sense, extensive knowledge, gravity, 
 and integrity, they will reap the honor and advantage of such 
 wisdom. 
 
 But if they are fools enough to appoint men of trifling or 
 vile characters, of mean abilities, faulty morals, or despicable 
 ignorance, they must reap the fruits of such folly, and con- 
 tent themselves to have no weight, dignity, or esteem in the 
 public councils ; and, what is more to be lamented by the 
 Commonwealth, to do no good there. 
 
 I have no objection to the States electing and recalling 
 their delegates as often as they please, but think it hard and 
 very injurious both to them and the Commonwealth that they 
 
28 
 
 should be obliged to discontinue tbem after three years' 
 service, if they find them on that trial to be men of sufficient 
 integrity and abilities ; a man of that experience is certainly 
 much more qualified to serve in the place, than a new mern- 
 ber of equal good character can be ; experience makes perfect 
 in every kind of business — old, experienced statesmen, of 
 tried and approved integrity and abilities, are a great bless- 
 ing to a State — they acquire great authority and esteem as 
 well as wisdom, and very much contribute to keep the system 
 of government in good and salutary order ; and this furnishes 
 the strongest reason why they should be continued in the 
 service, on Plato's great maxim, that " the man best qualified 
 to serve, ought to be appointed." 
 
 I am sorry to see a contrary maxim adopted in our Ameri- 
 can counsels ; to make the highest reason that can be given 
 for continuing a man in the public administration, assigned 
 as a constitutional and absolute reason for turning him out, 
 seems to me to be ,a solecism of a piece with many other 
 reforms, by which we set out to surprise the world with our 
 wisdom. 
 
 If we should adopt this maxim in the common affairs of 
 life, it would be found inconvenient, e. g., if we should make 
 it a part of our Constitution, that a man who has served a 
 three years' apprenticeship to the trade of a tailor or shoe- 
 maker, should be obliged to discontinue that business for the 
 three successive years, I am of opinion the country would 
 soon be cleared of good shoemakers and tailors. — Men are 
 no more bom statesmen than shoemakers or tailors — Experi- 
 ence is equally necessary to perfection in both. 
 
 It seems to me that a man's inducement to qualify himself 
 for a public employment, and make himself master of it, must 
 be much discouraged by this consideration, that let him take 
 whatever pains to qualify himself in the best manner, he 
 must be shortly turned out, and of course it would be of 
 more consequence to him, to turn his attention to some other 
 business, which h6 might adopt when his present appoint- 
 ment should expire ; and by this means the Commonwealth 
 is in danger of losing the zeal, industry, and shining abilities, 
 as well as services, of their most accomplished and valuable 
 men. 
 
 I hear that the State of Georgia has improved on this 
 blessed principle, and limited the continuance of their gov 
 
29 
 
 emors to one year; the consequence is, they have already 
 the ghosts of departed governors stalking about in every 
 part of their State, and growing more plenty every year; 
 and as the price of everything is reduced by its plenty, I can 
 suppose governors will soon be very low there. 
 
 This doctrine of rotation was first proposed by some 
 sprightly geniuses of brilliant politics, with this cogent 
 reason ; that by introducing a rotation in the public ofl&ces, 
 we should have a great number of men trained up to public 
 service ; but it appears to me that it will be more likely to 
 produce many jacks at all trades, but good at none. 
 
 I think that frequent elections are a suflELcient security 
 against the continuance of men in public of&ce whose conduct 
 is not approved, and there can be no reason for excluding 
 those whose conduct is approved, and who are allowed to be 
 better qualified than any men who can be found to supply 
 their places. 
 
 Another great object of government, is the apportionment 
 of burdens and benefits ; for if a greater quota of burden, or 
 a less quota of benefits than is just and right, be allotted to 
 any State, this ill apportionment will be an everlasting source 
 of uneasiness and discontent. In the first case, the over- 
 burdened State will complain; in the last case, all the States, 
 whose quota of benefit is under-rated, will be uneasy ; and 
 this is a case of such delicacy, that it cannot be safely trusted 
 to the arbitrary opinion or judgment of any body of men 
 however august. 
 
 Some natural principles of confessed equity, and which can 
 be reduced to a certainty, ought, if possible, to be found and 
 adopted; for it is of the highest moment to the Common- 
 wealth, to obviate, and, if possible, wholly to take away, such 
 a fruitful and common source of infinite disputes, as that of 
 apportionment of quotas has ever proved in all States of the 
 earth. 
 
 The value of lands may be a good rule ; but the ascertain- 
 ment of that value is impracticable ; no assessment can be 
 made which will not be liable to exception and debate — to 
 adopt a good rule in anything which is impracticable, is 
 absurd ; for it is physically impossible that anything should 
 be good for practise, which cannot be practised at all ; but if 
 the value of lands was capable of certain assessment, yet to 
 adopt that value as a rule of apportionment of quotas, and 
 
30 
 
 at tlie same time to except from valuation large tracts of 
 sundry States of immense value, whicli liave all been defended 
 by tbe joint arms of tbe wbole Kmpire, and for tbe defence 
 of whicb no additional quota of supply is to be demanded of 
 those States, to whom such lands are secured by such joint 
 efforts of the States, is in its nature unreasonable, and will 
 open a door for great complaint. 
 
 It is plain without argument, that such States ought either 
 to make grants to the Commonwealth of such tracts of 
 defended territory, or sell as much of them as will pay their 
 proper quota of defence, and pay such sums into the public 
 treasury ; and this ought to be done, let what rule of quota 
 forever be adopted with respect to the cultivated part of the 
 United States ; for no proposition of natural right and justice 
 can be plainer than this, that every part of valuable property 
 which is defended, ought to contribute its quota of supply 
 for that defence. 
 
 If then the value of cultivated lands is found to be an 
 impracticable rule of apportionment of quotas, we have to 
 seek for some other, equally just and less exceptionable. 
 
 It appears to me, that the number of living souls or 
 human persons of whatever age, sex, or condition, will afford 
 us a rule or measure of apportionment which will forever 
 increase and decrease with the real wealth of the States, and 
 will of course be a perpetual rule, not capable of corruption 
 by any circumstances of future time ; which is of vast con- 
 sideration in forming a constitution which is designed for 
 perpetual duration, and which will in its nature be as just 
 as to the inhabited parts of each State, as that of the value 
 of lands, or any other that has or can be mentioned. 
 
 Land takes its value not merely from the goodness of its 
 soil, but from innumerable other relative advantages among 
 which the population of the country may be considered as 
 principal; as lands in a full settled country will always 
 (caeteris paribus) bring more than lands in thin settlements. 
 On this principle, when the inhabitants of Russia, Poland, 
 etc., sell real estates, they do not value them as we do, by 
 the number of acres, but by the number of people who live 
 on them. 
 
 Where any piece of land has many advantages many 
 people will crowd there to obtain them; which will create 
 many competitors for the purchase of it; which will of course 
 
31 
 
 raise the price. Where there are fewer advantages, there 
 will be fewer corapetitors, and of course a less price; and 
 these two things will forever be proportionate to each other, 
 and of course the one will always be a sure index of the 
 other. 
 
 The only considerable objection I have ever heard to this, 
 is, that the quality of inhabitants differs in the different 
 States, and it is not reasonable that the black slaves in the 
 southern States should be estimated on a par with the white 
 freemen in the northern States To discuss this question 
 fairly, I think it will be just to estimate the neat value of 
 the labor of both; and if it shall appear that the labor of the 
 black person produces as much neat wealth to the southern 
 State, as the labor of the white person does to the northern 
 State, I think it will follow plainly that they are equally 
 useful inhabitants in point of wealth ; and therefore in the 
 case before us, should be estimated alike. 
 
 And if the amazing profits which the southern planters 
 boast of receiving from the labor of their slaves on their 
 plantations, are real, the southern people have greatly the 
 advantage in this kind of estimation, and as this objection 
 comes principally from the southward, I should suppose 
 that the gentlemen from that part would blush to urge it 
 any farther. 
 
 That the supreme authority should be vested with powers 
 to terminate and finally decide controversies arising between 
 different States, I take it, will be universally admitted, but I 
 humbly apprehend that an appeal from the first instance of 
 trial ought to be admitted in causes of great moment, on the 
 same reasons that such appeals are admitted in all the States 
 of Europe. It is well known to all men versed in courts, 
 that the first hearing of a cause rather gives an opening to 
 that evidence and reason which ought to decide it, than such 
 a full examination and thorough discussion, as should always 
 precede a final judgment, in causes of national consequence. 
 A detail of reasons might be added, which I deem it unnec- 
 essary to enlarge on here. 
 
 The supreme authority ought to have a power of peace 
 and war, and forming treaties and alliances with all foreign 
 powers ; which implies a necessity of their also having suffi- 
 cient powers to enforce the obedience of all subjects of the 
 United States to such treaties and alliances; with full 
 
32 
 
 powers to unite the force of the States; and direct its opera- 
 tions in war; and to punish all transgressors in all these 
 respects ; otherwise, by the imprudence of a few, the whole 
 Commonwealth may be embroiled with foreign powers, and 
 the operations of war may be rendered useless, or fail much 
 of their due effect. 
 
 All these I conceive will be easily granted, especially the 
 latter, as the power of Congress to appoint and direct the 
 army and navy in war, with all departments thereto belong- 
 ing, and punishing delinquents in them all, is already 
 admitted into practise in the course of the present unhappy 
 war,. in which we have been long engaged. 
 
 II. But now the great and most difl&cult part of this 
 weighty subject remains to be considered, viz, how these 
 supreme powers are to be constituted in such manner that 
 they may be able to exercise with full force and effect, the 
 vast authorities committed to them, for the good and well- 
 being of the United States, and yet be so checked and 
 restrained from exercising them to the injury and ruin of 
 the States, that we may with safety trust them with a com- 
 mission of such vast magnitude — and may Almighty wisdom 
 direct my pen in this arduous discussion. 
 
 I. The men who compose this important council, must be 
 delegated from all the States; and, of course, the hope of 
 approbation and continuance of honors, will naturally stimu- 
 late them to act right, and to please; the dread of censure 
 and disgrace will naturally operate as a check to restrain 
 them from improper behavior: but however natural and 
 forcible these motives may be, we find by sad experience, 
 they are not always strong enough to produce the effects we 
 expect and wish from them. 
 
 It is to be wished that none might be appointed that were 
 not fit and adequate to this weighty business; but a little 
 knowledge of human nature, and a little acquaintance with 
 the political history of mankind, will soon teach us that this 
 is not to be expected. 
 
 The representatives appointed by popular elections are 
 commonly not only the legal, but real, substantial representa- 
 tives of their electors, i. e., there will commonly be about the 
 same proportion of grave, sound, well-qualified men, trifling, 
 desultory men — wild or knavish schemers — and dull, ignorant 
 fools, in the delegated assembly, as in the body of electors. 
 
33 
 
 I know of no way to help this ; such delegates must be 
 admitted, as the States are pleased to send; and all that can 
 be done is, when they get together, to make the best of them. 
 
 We will suppose then they are all met in Congress, clothed 
 with that vast authority which is necessary to the well- 
 being, and even existence, of the union, that they should be 
 vested with; how shall we empower them to do all necessary 
 and ejBfectual good, and restrain them from doing hurt? To 
 do this properly, I think we must recur to those natural 
 motives of action, those feelings and apprehensions, which 
 usually occur to the mind at the very time of action; for 
 distant consequences, however weighty, are often too much 
 disregarded. 
 
 Truth loves light, and is vindicated by it. Wrong shrouds 
 itself in darkness, and is supported by delusion. An honest 
 well-qualified man loves light, can bear close examination, 
 and critical inquiry, and is best pleased when he is most 
 thoroughly understood: a man of corrupt design, or a fool of 
 no design, hates close examination and critical inquiry; the 
 knavery of the one, and the ignorance of the other, are dis- 
 covered by it, and they both usually grow uneasy, before the 
 investigation is half done. I do not believe that there is a 
 more natural truth in the world, than that divine one of our 
 Saviour, "he that doth truth, cometh to the light." I would 
 therefore recommend that mode of deliberation, which will 
 naturally bring on the most thorough and critical discussion 
 of the subject, previous to passing any act; and for that pur- 
 pose humbly propose, 
 
 2. That the Congress shall consist of two chambers, an 
 upper and a lower house, or senate and commons, with the 
 concurrence of both necessary to every act ; and that every 
 State send one or more delegates to each house: this will 
 subject every act to two discussions before two distinct cham- 
 bers of men equally qualified for the debate, equally masters 
 of the subject, and of equal authority in the decision. 
 
 These two houses will be governed by the same natural 
 motives and interests, viz, the good of the Commonwealth, 
 and the approbation of the people. Whilst at the same time, 
 the emulation naturally arising between them, will induce a 
 very critical and sharp-sighted inspection into the motions of 
 each other. Their different opinions will bring on confer- 
 ences between the two houses, in which the whole subject 
 
34 
 
 will be exhausted in arguments pro and con, and sliame will 
 be the portion of obstinate convicted error. 
 
 Under these circumstances, a man of ignorance or evil 
 design will be afraid to impose on the credulity, inattention, 
 or confidence of his house, by introducing any corrupt or 
 undigested proposition, which he knows he must be called 
 on to defend against the severe scrutiny and poignant objec- 
 tions of the other house. I do not believe the many hurtful 
 and foolish legislative acts which first or last have injured 
 all the States on earth, have originated so much in corrup- 
 tion as indolence, ignorance, and a want of a full compre- 
 hension of the subject, which a full, prying and emulous 
 discussion would tend in a great measure to remove: this 
 naturally rouses the lazy and idle, who hate the pain of close 
 thinking; animates the ambitious to excel in policy and 
 argument; and excites the whole to support the dignity of 
 their house, and vindicate their own propositions. 
 
 I am not of opinion that bodies of elective men, which 
 usually compose Parliaments, Diets, Assemblies, Congresses, 
 etc., are commonly dishonest: but I believe it rarely happens 
 that there are not designing men among them; and I think 
 it would be much more difficult for them to unite their par- 
 tisans in two houses, and corrupt or deceive them both, than 
 to carry on their designs where there is but one unalarmed, 
 unapprehensive house to be managed; and as there is no 
 hope of making these bad men good, the best policy is to 
 embarrass them, and make their work as difficult as possible. 
 
 In these assemblies are frequently to be found sanguine 
 men, upright enough indeed, but of strong, wild projection, 
 whose brains are always teeming with Utopian, chimerical 
 plans, and political whims, very destructive to society. I 
 hardly know a greater evil than to have the supreme council 
 of a Nation played off on such men's wires ; such baseless 
 visions at best end in darkness, and the dance, though easy 
 and merry enough at first, rarely fails to plunge the credu- 
 lous, simple followers into sloughs and bogs at last. 
 
 Nothing can tend more effectually to obviate these evils, 
 and to mortify and cure such maggoty brains, than to see 
 the absurdity of their projects exposed by the several argu- 
 ments and keen satire which a full, emulous, and spirited 
 discussion of the subject will naturally produce: we have 
 had enough of these geniuses in the short course of our 
 
35 
 
 politics, both in our national and provincial councils, and 
 have felt enough of their evil effects, to induce us to wish 
 for any good method to keep ourselves clear of them in 
 future. 
 
 The consultations and decisions of national councils are 
 so very important, that the fate of millions depends on them, 
 therefore no man ought to speak in such assemblies, without 
 considering that the fate of millions hangs on his tongue, 
 — and of course a man can have no right in such august 
 councils to utter undigested sentiments, or indulge himself 
 in sudden, unexamined flights of thought; his most tried 
 and improved abilities are due to the State, who have 
 trusted him with their most important interests. 
 
 A man must therefore be most inexcusable, who is either 
 absent during such debates, or sleeps, or whispers, or catches 
 flies during the argument, and just rouses when the vote is 
 called, to give his yea or nay, to the weal or woe of a nation. 
 Therefore it is manifestly proper, that every natural motive 
 that can operate on his understanding, or his passions, to 
 engage his attention and utmost efforts, should be put in 
 practise, and that his present feelings should be raised by 
 every motive of honor and shame, to stimulate him to every 
 practicable degree of diligence and exertion, to be as far 
 as possible useful in the great discussion. 
 
 I appeal to the feelings of every reader, if he would not 
 (were he in either house) be much more strongly and naturally 
 induced to exert his utmost abilities and attention to any 
 question which was to pass through the ordeal of a spirited 
 discussion of another house, than he would do, if the abso- 
 lute decision depended on his own house, without any further 
 inquiry or challenge on the subject. 
 
 As Congress will ever be composed of men delegated by 
 the several States, it may well be supposed that they have 
 the confidence of their several States, and understand well 
 the policy and present condition of them; it may also be 
 supposed that they come with strong local attachments, 
 and habits of thinking limited to the interests of their par- 
 ticular States ; it may therefore be supposed they will need 
 much information, in order to their gaining that enlarge- 
 ment of ideas, and great comprehension of thought, which will 
 be necessary to enable them to think properly on that large 
 scale, which takes into view the interests of all the States. 
 
36 
 
 The greatest care and wisdom is therefore requisite to 
 give them the best and surest information, and of that kind 
 that may be the most safely relied on, to prevent their being 
 deluded or prejudiced by partial representations, made by 
 interested men who have particular views. 
 
 This information may perhaps be best made by the great 
 ministers of state, who ought to be men of the greatest 
 abilities and integrity; their business is confined to their 
 several departments, and their attention engaged strongly 
 and constantly to all the several parts of the same; the 
 whole arrangement, method, and order of which, are formed, 
 superintended, and managed in their offices, and all infor- 
 mation relative to their department centre there. 
 
 These ministers will of course have the best information, 
 and most perfect knowledge, of the state of the Nation, as far 
 as it relates to their several departments, and will of course be 
 able to give the best information to Congress, in what manner 
 any bill proposed will affect the public interest in their several 
 departments, which will nearly comprehend the whole. 
 
 The Financiers manages the whole subject of revenues 
 and expenditures — the Secretary of State takes knowledge 
 of the general policy and internal government — the minister 
 of war presides in the whole business of war and defense — 
 and the minister of foreign affairs regards the whole state of 
 the nation, as it stands related to, or connected with, all 
 foreign powers. 
 
 I mention a Secretary of State, because all other nations 
 have one, and I suppose we shall need one as much as they, 
 and the multiplicity of affairs which naturally fall into his 
 office will grow so fast, that I imagine we shall soon be under 
 the necessity of appointing one. 
 
 To these I would add Judges of Law, and chancery ; but 
 I fear they will not be very soon appointed — the one sup- 
 poses the existence of law, the other of equity — and when 
 we shall be altogether convinced of the absolute necessity 
 of the real and effectual existence of both of these, we shall 
 probably appoint proper heads to preside in those depart- 
 ments. I would therefore propose, 
 
 3. That when any bill shall pass the second reading in 
 the house in which it originates, and before it shall be finally 
 enacted, copies of it shall be sent to each of the said ministers 
 of state, in being at the time, who shall give said house in 
 
37 
 
 writing, the fullest information in their power, and their 
 most explicit sentiments of the operation of the said bill on 
 the public interest, as far as relates to their respective 
 departments, which shall be received and read in said house, 
 and entered on their minutes, before they finally pass the 
 bill; and when they send the bill for concurrence to the 
 other house, they shall send therewith the said informations 
 of the said ministers of state, which shall likewise be read 
 in that house before their concurrence is finally passed. 
 
 I do not mean to give these great ministers of state a 
 negative on Congress, but I mean to oblige Congress to 
 receive their advices before they pass their bills, and that 
 every act shall be void that is not passed with these forms ; 
 and I further propose, that either house of Congress may, 
 if they please, admit the said ministers to be present and 
 assist in the debates of the house, but without any right of 
 vote in the decision. 
 
 It appears to me that if every act shall pass so many 
 different corps of discussion before it is completed, where 
 each of them stake their characters on the advice or vote 
 they give, there will be all the light thrown on the case, 
 which the nature and circumstances of it can admit, and 
 any corrupt man will find it extremely difi5.cult to foist in 
 any erroneous clause whatever; and every ignorant or lazy 
 man will find the strongest inducements to make himself 
 master of the subject, that he may appear with some toler 
 able degree of character in it; and the whole will find them- 
 selves in a manner compelled, diligently and sincerely to 
 seek for the real state of the facts, and the natural fitness 
 and truths arising from them, i. e.^ the whole natural prin- 
 ciples on which the subjects depend, and which alone can 
 endure every test, to the end that they may have not only 
 the inward satisfaction of acting properly and usefully for 
 the States, but also the credit and character which is or 
 ought ever to be annexed to such a conduct. 
 
 This will give the great laws of Congress the highest prob- 
 ability, presumption, and means of right, fitness, and truth, 
 that any laws whatever can have at their first enaction and 
 will of course afford the highest reason for the confidence 
 and acquiescence of the States, and all their subjects, va. 
 them ; and being grounded in truth and natural fitness, their 
 operations will be easy, salutary, and satisfactory. 
 
38 
 
 If experience shall discover error in any law (for practise 
 will certainly discover such errors, if there be any) the 
 legislature will always be able to correct them, by such 
 repeals, amendments, or new laws as shall be found neces- 
 sary ; but as it is much easier to prevent mischiefs than to 
 remedy them, all possible caution, prudence, and attention 
 should be sued, to make the laws right at first. 
 
 4, There is another body of men among us, whose busi- 
 ness of life, and whose full and extensive intelligence, for- 
 eign and domestic, naturally make them more perfectly 
 acquainted with the sources of our wealth, and whose par- 
 ticular interests are more intimately and necessarily con- 
 nected with the general prosperity of the country, than any 
 other order of men in the States. I mean the Merchants; 
 and I could wish that Congress might have the benefit of 
 that extensive and important information, which this body 
 of men are very capable of laying before them. 
 
 Trade is of such essential importance to our interests, and 
 so intimately connected with all our staples, great and small, 
 that no sources of our wealth can flourish, and operate to 
 the general benefit of the community, without it. Our hus- 
 bandry, that great staple of our country, can never exceed 
 our home consumption without this — it is plain at first 
 sight, that the farmer will not toil and sweat through the 
 year to raise great plenty of the produce of the soil, if there 
 is no market for his produce, when he has it ready for sale, 
 i. e., if there are no merchants to buy it. 
 
 In like manner, the manufacturer will not lay out his 
 business on any large scale, if there is no merchant to buy 
 his fabrics when he has finished them ; a vent is of the most 
 essential importance to every manufacturing country — the 
 merchants, therefore, become the natural negotiators of the 
 wealth of the country, who take off the abundance, and sup- 
 ply the wants, of the inhabitants ; — and as this negotiation 
 is the business of their lives, and the source of their own 
 wealth, they of course become better acquainted with both 
 our abundance and wants, and are more interested in finding 
 and improving the best vent for the one, and supply of the 
 other, than any other men among us, and they have a natural 
 interest in making both the purchase and supply as conven- 
 ient to their customers as possible, that they may secure 
 their custom, and thereby increase their own business. 
 
39 
 
 It follows then, that the merchants are not only qualified 
 to give the fullest and most important information to our 
 supreme legislature, concerning the state of our trade — the 
 abundance and wants — the wealth and poverty, of our people, 
 i. e.^ their most important interests, but are also the most 
 likely to do it fairly and truly, and to forward with their influ- 
 ence, every measure which will operate to the convenience 
 and benefit of our commerce, and oppose with their whole 
 weight and superior knowledge of the subject, any wild 
 schemes, which an ignorant or arbitrary legislature may 
 attempt to introduce, to the hurt and embarrasment of our 
 intercourse both with one another, and with foreigners. 
 
 The States of Venice and Holland have ever been governed 
 by merchants, or at least their policy has ever been under 
 the great influence of that sort of men. No States have been 
 better served, as appears by their great success, the ease and 
 happiness of their citizens, as well as the strength and riches 
 of their Commonwealths : the one is the oldest, and the other 
 the richest, State in the world of equal number of people — 
 the one has maintained sundry wars with the Grand 
 Turk — the other has withstood the power of Spain and 
 France; and the capitals of both have long been the princi- 
 pal marts of the several parts of Europe in which they are 
 situated ; and the banks of both are the best supported, and 
 in the best credit, of any banks in Europe, though their 
 countries or territories are very small, and their inhabitants 
 but a handful, when compared with the great States in their 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Merchants must, from the nature of their business, certainly 
 understand the interests and resources of their country, the 
 best of any men in it ; and I know not of any one reason 
 why they should be deemed less upright or patriotic, than 
 any other rank of citizen whatever. 
 
 I therefore humbly propose, if the merchants in the several 
 States are disposed to send delegates from their body, to meet 
 and attend the sitting of Congress, that they shall be per- 
 mitted to form a chamber of commerce, and their advice to 
 Congress be demanded and admitted concerning all bills 
 before Congress, as far as the same may affect the trade of 
 the States. 
 
 I have no idea that the continent is made for Congress : I 
 take them to be no more than the upper servants of the great 
 
40 
 
 political body, who are to find out things by study and inquiry 
 as other people do ; and therefore I think it necessary to place 
 them under the best possible advantages for information, and 
 to require them to improve all those advantages, to qualify 
 themselves in the best manner possible, for the wise and 
 useful discharge of the vast trust and mighty authority 
 reposed in them ; and as I conceive the advice of the mer- 
 chants to be one of the greatest sources of mercantile infor- 
 mation, which is anywhere placed within their reach, it 
 ought by no means to be neglected, but so husbanded and 
 improved, that the greatest possible advantages may be 
 derived from it. 
 
 Besides this, I have another reason why the merchants 
 ought to be consulted; I take it to be very plain that the 
 husbandry and manufactures of the country must be ruined, 
 if the present rate of taxes is continued on them much longer, 
 and of course a very great part of our revenue must arise 
 from imposts on merchandise, which will fall directly within 
 the merchants' sphere of business, and of course their con- 
 currence and advice will be of the utmost consequence, not 
 only to direct the properest mode of levying those duties, 
 but also to get them carried into quiet and peaceable exe- 
 cution. 
 
 No men are more conversant with the citizens, or more 
 intimately connected with their interests, than the merchants, 
 and therefore their weight and influence will have a mighty 
 effect on the minds of the people. I do not recollect an 
 instance, in which the Court of London ever rejected the 
 remonstrances and advices of the merchants, and did not 
 suffer severely for their pride. We have some striking 
 instances of this in the disregarded advices and remonstrances 
 of very many English merchants against the American war, 
 and their fears and apprehensions we see verified, almost 
 like prophecies by the event. 
 
 I know not why I should continue this argument any 
 longer or indeed why I should have urged it so long, in as 
 much as I cannot conceive that Congress or anybody else 
 will deem it below the dignity of the supreme power to con- 
 sult so important an order of men, in matters of the first 
 consequence, which fall immediately under their notice, and 
 in which their experience, and of course their knowledge and 
 advice, are preferable to those of any other order of men. 
 
41 
 
 Besides the benefits wHcli Congress may receive from this 
 institution, a chamber of commerce, composed of members 
 from all trading towns in the States, if properly instituted 
 and conducted, will produce very many, I might almost 
 say, innum^able advantages of singular utility to all the 
 States — it will give dignity, uniformity, and safety to our 
 trade— establish the credit of the bank — secure the confidence 
 of foreign merchants — prove in very many instances a fruit- 
 ful source of improvement of our staples and mutual inter- 
 course—correct many abuses — pacify discontents — unite us 
 *in our interests, and thereby cement the general union of 
 the whole Commonwealth — will relieve Congress from the 
 pain and trouble of deciding many intricate questions of trade 
 which they do not understand, by referring them over to 
 this chamber, where they will be discussed by an order of 
 men, the most competent to the business of any that can be 
 found, and most likely to give a decision that shall be just, 
 useful, and satisfactory. 
 
 It may be objected to all this, that the less complex and 
 the more simple every constitution is, the nearer it comes to 
 perfection : this argument would be very good, and afford a 
 very forcible conclusion, if the government of men was like 
 that of the Almighty, always founded on wisdom, knowledge 
 and truth; but in the present imperfect state of human 
 nature, where the best of men know but in part, and must 
 recur to advice and information for the rest, it certainly 
 becomes necessary to form a constitution on such principles, 
 as will secure that information and advice in the best and 
 surest manner possible. 
 
 It may be further objected that the forms herein proposed 
 will embarrass the business of Congress, and make it at 
 best slow and dilatory. As far as this form will prevent the 
 hurrying a bill through the house without due examination, 
 the objection itself becomes an advantage — at most these 
 checks on the supreme authority can have no further effect 
 than to delay or destroy a good bill, but cannot pass a bad 
 one; and I think it much better in the main, to lose a good 
 bill than to suffer a bad one to pass into a law. — Besides it 
 is not to be supposed that clear, plain cases will meet with 
 embarrassment, and it is most safe that untried, doubtful, 
 difficult matters should pass through the gravest and fullest 
 discussion, before the sanction of the law is given to them. 
 
43 
 
 But what is to be done if tlie two houses grow jealous and 
 ill-natured, and after all their information and advice, grow 
 out of humor and insincere, and no concurrence can be 
 obtained? I answer, sit still and do nothing until they get 
 into a better humor: I think this is much better than to pass 
 laws in such a temper and spirit, as the objection supposes. 
 
 It is however an ill compliment to so many grave person- 
 ages, to suppose them capable of throwing aside their reason, 
 and giving themselves up like children to the control of their 
 passions; or, if this should happen for a moment, that it 
 should continue any length of time, is hardly to be presumed 
 of a body of men placed in such high stations of dignity and 
 importance, with the eyes of all the world upon them — but 
 if they should, after all, be capable of this, I think it mad- 
 ness to set them to making laws, during such fits — it is best, 
 when they are in no condition to do good, to keep them from 
 doing hurt — and if they do not grow wiser in reasonable 
 time, I know of nothing better, than to be ashamed of our old 
 appointments, and make new ones. 
 
 But what if the country is invaded, or some other exigency 
 happens, so pressing that the safety of the State requires an 
 immediate resolution? I answer, what would you do if such 
 a case should happen, where there was but one house, 
 unchecked, but equally divided, so that a legal vote could not 
 be obtained. The matter is certainly equally difl&cult and 
 embarrassed in both cases : but in the case proposed I know 
 of no better way than that which the Romans adopted on the 
 like occasion, viz., that both houses meet in one chamber, 
 and choose a dictator, who should have and exercise the 
 whole power of both houses, till such time as they should be 
 able to concur in displacing him, and that the whole power 
 of the two houses should be suspended in the meantime. 
 
 5. I further propose, that no grant of money whatever 
 shall be made, without an appropriation, and that rigid pen- 
 alties (no matter how great, in my opinion the halter would 
 be mild enough) shall be inflicted on any person, however 
 august his station, who should give order, or vote for the 
 payment, or actually pay one shilling of such money to any 
 other purpose than that of its appropriation, and that no 
 order whatever of any superior in office shall justify such 
 payment, but every order shall express what funds it is 
 drawn upon, and what appropriation it is to be charged to, or 
 the order shall not be paid. 
 
43 
 
 This kind of embezzlement is of so fatal a nature, that no 
 measures or bounds are to be observed in curing it ; when 
 ministers will set forth the most specious and necessary occa- 
 sions for money, and induce the people to pay it in full tale ; 
 and when they have gotten possession of it, to neglect the 
 great objects for which it was given, and pay it, sometimes 
 squander it away, for different purposes, oftentimes for use- 
 less, yea, hurtful ones, yea, often even to bribe and corrupt 
 the very officers of government, to betray their trust, and 
 contaminate the State, even in its public offices — to force 
 people to buy their own destruction, and pay for it with their 
 hard labor, the very sweat of their brow, is a crime of so 
 high a nature, that I know not any gibbet too cruel for such 
 offenders. 
 
 6. I would further propose, that the aforesaid great minis- 
 ters of state shall compose a Council of State, to whose number 
 Congress may add three others, viz, one from New England, 
 one from the middle States, and one from the southern States, 
 one of which to be appointed President by Congress ; to all 
 of whom shall be committed the supreme executive authoritj' 
 of the States (all and singular of them ever accountable to 
 Congress) who shall superintend all the executive depart- 
 ments, and appoint all executive officers, who shall ever be 
 accountable to, and removable for just cause by, them or 
 Congress, i. e.^ either of them. 
 
 7. I propose further, that the powers of Congress, and all 
 the other departments, acting under them, shall all be re- 
 stricted to such matters only of general necessity and utility 
 to all the States, as cannot come within the jurisdiction of 
 any particular State, or to which the authority of any par- 
 ticular State is not competent: so that each particular State 
 shall enjoy all sovereignty and supreme authority to all 
 intents and purposes, excepting only those high authorities 
 and powers by them delegated to Congress, for the purposes 
 of the general union. 
 
 There remains one very important article still to be dis- 
 cussed, viz, what methods the Constitution shall point out, 
 to enforce the acts and requisitions of Congress through the 
 several States; and how the States which refuse or delay 
 obedience to such acts and requisitions, shall be treated: this, 
 I know, is a particular of the greatest delicacy, as well as of 
 the utmost importance; and therefore, I think, ought to be 
 
44 
 
 decidedly settled by the Constitution, in our coolest hours, 
 whilst no passions or prejudices exist, which may be excited 
 by the great interests or strong circumstances of any par- 
 ticular case which may happen. 
 
 I know that supreme authorities are liable to err, as well as 
 subordinate ones. I know that courts may be in the wrong, 
 as well as the people ; such is the imperfect state of human 
 nature in all ranks and degrees of men ; but we must take 
 human nature as it is; it cannot be mended; and we are 
 compelled both by wisdom and necessity, to adopt such 
 methods as promise the greatest attainable good, though per- 
 haps not the greatest possible, and such as are liable to the 
 fewest inconveniences, though not altogether free of them. 
 
 This is a question of such magnitude, that I think it 
 necessary to premise the great natural principles on which 
 its decision ought to depend — In the present state of human 
 nature, all human life is a life of chances ; it is impossible 
 to make any interest so certain, but there will be a chance 
 against it; and we are in all cases obliged to adopt a chance 
 against us, in order to bring ourselves within the benefit of a 
 greater chance in our favor ; and that calculation of chances 
 which is grounded on the great natural principles of truth 
 and fitness, is of all others the most likely to come out right. 
 
 1. No laws of any State whatever, which do not carry in 
 them a force which extends to their effectual and final 
 execution, can afford a certain or sufficient security to the 
 subject: this is too plain to need any proof. 
 
 2. Laws or ordinances of any kind (especially of august 
 bodies of high dignity and consequence), which fail of execu- 
 tion are much worse than none; they weaken the govern- 
 ment; expose it to contempt; destroy the confidence of all 
 men, natives and foreigners, in it; and expose both aggregate 
 bodies and individuals, who have placed confidence in it, to 
 many ruinous disappointments, which they would have 
 escaped, had no law or ordinance been made : therefore, 
 
 3. To appoint a Congress with powers to do all acts neces- 
 sary for the support and uses of the union ; and at the same 
 time to leave all the States at liberty to obey them or not 
 with impunity, is, in every view, the grossest absurdity, 
 worse than a state of nature without any supreme authority 
 at all, and at best a ridiculous effort of childish nonsense: 
 and of course. 
 
45 
 
 4- Every State in the Union is tinder the highest obligation 
 to obey the supreme authority of the whole, and in the highest 
 degree amenable to it, and subject to the highest censure for 
 disobedience— Yet all this notwithstanding, I think the soul 
 that sins shall die, i. e., the censure of the great supreme 
 power, ought to be so directed, if possible, as to light on those 
 persons, who have betrayed their country, and exposed it to 
 dissolution, by opposing and rejecting that supreme authority, 
 which is the band of our union, and from whence proceeds 
 the principal strength and energy of our government. 
 
 I therefore propose, that every person whatever, whether 
 in public or private character, who shall, by public vote or 
 overt act, disobey the supreme authority, shall be amenable 
 to Congress, shall be summoned and compelled to appear 
 before Congress, and, on due conviction, suffer such fine, 
 imprisonment, or other punishment, as the supreme authority 
 shall judge requisite. 
 
 It may be objected here, that this will make a Member of 
 Assembly accountable to Congress for his vote in Assembly; 
 I answer, it does so in this only case, viz., when that vote is 
 to disobey the supreme authority; no Member of Assembly 
 can have right to give such a vote, and therefore ought to be 
 punished for so doing — When the supreme authority is dis- 
 obeyed, the government must lose its energy and effect, and 
 of course the Empire must be shaken to its very foundation. 
 
 A government which is but half executed, or whose opera- 
 tions may all be stopped by a single vote, is the most danger- 
 ous of all institutions. — See the present Poland, and ancient 
 Greece buried in ruins, in consequence of this fatal error in 
 their policy. A government which has not energy and effect, 
 can never afford protection or security to its subjects, t. e.^ 
 must ever be ineffectual to its own ends. 
 
 I cannot therefore admit, that the great ends of our Union 
 should lie at the mercy of a single State, or that" the energy 
 of our government should be checked by a single disobedi- 
 ence, or that such disobedience should ever be sheltered from 
 censure and punishment; the consequences is too capital, too 
 fatal to be admitted. Even though I know very well that a 
 supreme authority, with all its dignity and importance, is 
 subject to passions like other lesser powers, that they may 
 be and often are heated, violent, oppressive, and very tyran- 
 nical; yet I know also, that perfection is not to be hoped for 
 
46 
 
 in this life, and we must take all institutions with their nat- 
 ural defects, or reject them altogether: I will gnard against 
 these abuses of power as far as possible, but I cannot give 
 up all government, or destroy its necessary energy, for fear 
 of these abuses. 
 
 But to fence them out as far as possible, and to give the 
 States as great a check on the supreme authority, as can 
 consist with its necessary energy and effect, 
 
 I propose that any State may petition Congress to repeal 
 any law or decision which they have made, and if more than 
 half the States do this, the law or decision shall be repealed, 
 let its nature or importance be however great, excepting 
 only such acts as create funds for the public credit, which 
 shall never be repealed till their end is effected, or other 
 funds equally effectual are substituted in their place; but 
 Congress shall not be obliged to repeal any of these acts, so 
 petitioned against, till they have time to lay the reasons of 
 such acts before such petitioning States, and to receive their 
 answer; because such petitions may arise from sudden heats, 
 popular prejudices, or the publication of matters false in 
 fact, and may require time and means of cool reflection and 
 the fullest information, before the final decision is made: 
 but if after all more than half of the States persist in their 
 demand of a repeal, it shall take place. 
 
 The reason is, the uneasiness of a majority of States 
 affords a strong presumption that the act is wrong, for 
 uneasiness arises much more frequently from wrong than 
 right; but if the act was good and right, it would still be 
 better to repeal and lose it, than to force the execution of it 
 against the opinion of a major part of the States; and 
 lastly, if every act of Congress is subject to this repeal. Con- 
 gress itself will have stronger inducement not only to exam- 
 ine well the several acts under their consideration, but also 
 to communicate the reasons of them to the States, than they 
 would have if their simple vote gave the final stamp of irre- 
 vocable authority to their acts. 
 
 Further I propose, that if the execution of any act or order 
 of the supreme authority shall be opposed by force in any of 
 the States (which God forbid) it shall be lawful for Congress 
 to send into such State a sufficient force to suppress it. 
 
 On the whole, I take it that the very existence and use of 
 our union essentially depends on the full energy and final 
 
47 
 
 effect of the laws made to support it; and therefore I sacrifice 
 all other considerations to this energy and effect, and if our 
 Union is not worth this purchase, we must give it up — the 
 nature of the thing does not admit of any other alternative. 
 
 I do contend that our Union is worth this purchase — 
 with it, every individual rests secure under its protection 
 against foreign or domestic insult and oppression — without 
 it, we can have no security against the oppression, insult, 
 and invasion of foreign powers; for no single State is of 
 importance enough to be an object of treaty with them, 
 nor, if it was, could it bear the expense of such treaties, or 
 support any character or respect in a dissevered state, but 
 must lose all respectability among the nations abroad. 
 
 We have a very extensive trade, which cannot be carried 
 on with security and advantage, without treaties of com- 
 merce and alliance with foreign nations. 
 
 We have an extensive western territory which cannot 
 otherwise be defended against the invasion of foreign nations, 
 bordering on our frontiers, who will cover it with their own 
 inhabitants, and we shall loose it forever, and our extent of 
 empire be thereby restrained; and what is worse, their 
 numerous posterity will in future time drive ours into the 
 sea, as the Goths and Vandals formerly conquered the 
 Romans in like circumstances, unless we have the force 
 of the union to repel such invasions. We have, without 
 the union, no security against the inroads and wars of one 
 State upon another, by which our wealth and strength, 
 as well as ease and comfort, will be devoured by enemies 
 growing out of our own bowels. 
 
 I conclude then, that our union is not only of the most 
 essential consequence to the well-being of the States in 
 general but to that of every individual citizen of them, and 
 of course ought to be supported, and made as useful and 
 safe as possible, by a Constitution which admits that full 
 energy and final effect of government which alone can secure 
 its great ends and uses. 
 
 In a dissertation of this sort, I would not wish to descend 
 to minutiae, yet there are some sinall matters which have 
 important consequences, and therefore ought to be noticed. 
 It is necessary that Congress should have all usual and 
 necessary powers of self-preservation and order, e. g., to 
 imprison for contempt, insult, or interruption, etc., and to 
 
48 
 
 expel their own members for due causes, among wWcIl I 
 would rank tliat of non-attendance on the house, or partial 
 attendance without such excuse as shall satisfy the house. 
 
 Where there is such vast authority and trust devolved 
 on Congress, and the grand and most important interests 
 of the Empire rest on their decisions, it appears to me 
 highly unreasonable that we should suffer their august 
 consultations to be suspended, or their dignity, authority, 
 and influence lessened by the idleness, neglect, and non- 
 attendance of its members; for we know that the acts of 
 a thin house do not usually carry with them the same degree 
 of weight and respect as those of a full house. 
 
 Besides I think, when a man is deputed a delegate in 
 Congress, and has undertaken the business, the whole 
 Bmpire becomes of course possessed of a right to his best 
 and constant services, which if any member refuses or neg- 
 lects, the Empire is injured and ought to resent the injury, 
 at least so far as to expel and send him home, that so his 
 place may be better supplied. 
 
 I have one argument in favor of my whole plan, viz, 
 it is so formed that no men of dull intellects, or small knowl- 
 edge, or of habits too idle for constant attendance, or close 
 and steady attention, can do the business with any tolerable 
 degree of respectability, nor can they find either honor, 
 profit, or satisfaction in being there, and of course, I could 
 wish that the choice of the electors might never fall on such 
 a man, or if it should, that he might have sense enough (of 
 pain at least, if not of shame) to decline his acceptance. 
 
 For after all that can be done, I do not think that a good 
 administration depends wholly on a good Constitution and 
 good laws, for insuflEcient or bad men will always make bad 
 work, and a bad administration, let the Constitution and 
 laws be ever so good ; the management of able, faithful, and 
 upright men alone can cause an administration to brighten, 
 and the dignity and wisdom of an Empire to rise into respect ; 
 make truth the line and measure of public decision; give 
 weight and authority to the government, and security and 
 peace to the subject. 
 
 We now hope that we are on the close of a war of mighty 
 effort and great distress, against the greatest power on earth, 
 whetted into the most keen resentment and savage fierceness, 
 which can be excited by wounded pride, and which usually 
 
49 
 
 rises higher between brother and brother offended, than 
 between strangers in contest. Twelve of the Thirteen United 
 States have felt the actual and cruel invasions of the enemy, 
 and eleven of our capitals have been under their power, first 
 or last, during the dreadful conflict ; but a good Providence, 
 our own virtue and firmness, and the help of our friends, have 
 enabled us to rise superior to all the power of our adversaries, 
 and made them seek to be at peace with us. 
 
 During the extreme pressures of the war, indeed many 
 errors in our administration have been committed, when we 
 could not have experience and time for reflection, to make 
 us wise; but these will easily be excused, forgiven, and for- 
 gotten, if we can now, while at leisure, find virtue, wisdom, 
 and foresight enough to correct them, and form such estab- 
 lishments, as shall secure the great ends of our union, and 
 give dignity, force, utility, and permanency to our Empire. 
 
 It is a pity we should lose the honor and blessings which 
 have cost us so dear, for want of wisdom and firmness, in 
 measures, which are essential to our preservation. It is now 
 at our option, either to fall back into our original atoms, or 
 form such an union, as shall command the respect of the 
 world, and give honor and security to our people. 
 
 This vast subject lies with mighty weight on my mind, 
 and I have bestowed on it my utmost attention, and here 
 offer the public the best thoughts and sentiments I am 
 master of. I have confined myself in this dissertation en- 
 tirely to the nature, reason, and truth of my subject, without 
 once adverting to the reception it might meet with from men 
 of different prejudices or interests. To find the truth, not 
 to carry a point, has been my object. 
 
 I have not the vanity to imagine that my sentiments may 
 be adopted; I shall have all the reward I wish or expect, if 
 my dissertation shall throw any light on the great subject, 
 shall excite an emulation of inquiry, and animate some abler 
 genius to form a plan of greater perfection, less objectionable, 
 and more useful. 
 
NOTES APPENDED BY PELATIAH WEBSTER TO THE REPUB- 
 LICATION MADE AT PHILADELPHIA IN 1791. 
 
 NOTE I. 
 
 I . Forming a plan of confederation, or a system of general 
 government of tlie United States, engrossed the attention of 
 Congress from the declaration of independence, July 4, 1776, 
 till the same was completed by Congress, July 9, 1778, and 
 recommended to the several States for ratification, which 
 finally took place, March i, 1781; from which time the said 
 confederation was considered as the grand constitution of the 
 general government, and the whole administration was con- 
 formed to it. 
 
 And as it had stood the test of discussion in Congress for 
 two years, before they completed and adopted it, and in all 
 the States for three years more, before it was finally ratified, 
 one would have thought that it must have been a very fin- 
 ished and perfect plan of government. 
 
 But on trial of it in practice, it was found to be extremely 
 weak, defective, totally inefficient, and altogether inadequate 
 to its great ends and purposes. For, 
 
 1. It blended the legislative and executive powers together 
 in one body. 
 
 2. This body, viz. Congress, consisted of but one house, 
 without any check upon their resolutions. 
 
 3. The powers of Congress in very few instances were 
 definitive and final ; in the most important articles of govern- 
 ment they could do no more than recommend to the several 
 States ; the consent of every one of which was necessary to 
 give legal sanction to any act so recommended. 
 
 4. They could assess and levy no taxes. 
 
 5. They could institute and execute no punishments, 
 except in the military department. 
 
 6. They had no power of deciding or controlling the con- 
 tentions and disputes of different States with each other. 
 
 7. They could not regulate the general trade : or, 
 
 (50) 
 
51 
 
 8._ Kven make laws to secure either public treaties with 
 foreign States, or the persons of public ambassadors, or to 
 punish violations or injuries done to either of them. 
 
 9- l^tey could institute no general judiciary powers. 
 
 19- 'They could regulate no public roads, canals, or inland 
 navigation, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 And what caps all the rest was, that (whilst under such an 
 inefficient political constitution, the only chance we had of 
 any tolerable administration lay wholly in the prudence and 
 wisdom of the men who happened to take the lead in our 
 public councils) it was fatally provided by the absurd doctrine 
 of rotation, that if any Member of Congress by three years' 
 experience and application, had qualified himself to manage 
 our public affairs with consistency and fitness, that he should 
 be constitutionally and absolutely rendered incapable of 
 serving any longer, till by three years' discontinuance, he 
 had pretty well lost the cue or train of the public counsels, 
 and forgot the ideas and plans which made his service useful 
 and important; and, in the mean time, his place should be 
 supplied by a fresh man, who had the whole matter to learn, 
 and when he had learned it, was to give place to another 
 fresh man ; and so on to the end of the chapter. 
 
 The sensible mind of the United States, by long experience 
 of the fatal mischiefs of anarchy, or (which is about the same 
 thing) of this ridiculous, inefficient form of government, 
 began to apprehend that there was something wrong in our 
 policy, which ought to be redressed and mended ; but nobody 
 undertook to delineate the necessary amendments. 
 
 I was then pretty much at leisure, and was fully of opinion 
 (though the sentiment at that time would not very well bear) 
 that it would be ten times easier to form a new constitution 
 
52 
 
 Note 2. 
 
 At the time when this Dissertation was written (Feb, 16, 
 1783) the defects and insufl&ciency of the Old Federal Con- 
 stitution were universally felt and acknowledged; it was 
 manifest, not only that the internal police, justice, security 
 and peace of the States could never be preserved under it, 
 but the finances and public credit would necessarily become 
 so embarrassed, precarious, and void of support, that no 
 public movement, which depended on the revenue, could be 
 managed with any effectual certainty : but though the public 
 mind was under full conviction of all these mischiefs, and was 
 contemplating a remedy, yet the public ideas were not at all 
 concentrated, much less arranged into any new system or 
 form of government, which would obviate these evils. Under 
 these circumstances I offered this Dissertation to the public : 
 how far the principles of it were adopted or rejected in the 
 New Constitution, which was four years afterwards (Sept. 
 17, 1787) formed by the General Convention, and since 
 ratified by all the States, is obvious to every one. 
 
 I wish here to remark the great particulars of my plan 
 which were rejected by the Convention. 
 
 1. My plan was to keep the legislative and executive 
 departments entirely distinct ; the one to consist of the two 
 houses of Congress, the other to rest entirely in the Grand 
 Council of State. 
 
 2. I proposed to introduce a Chamber of Commerce, to 
 consist of merchants, who should be consulted by the legis- 
 lature in all matters of trade and revenue, and which should 
 have the conducting the revenue committed to them. 
 
 The first of these the Convention qualified; the second 
 they say nothing of, i. ^., take no notice of it. 
 
 3. I proposed that the great of&cers of state should have 
 the perusal of all bills, before they were enacted into laws, 
 and should be required to give their opinion of them, as far 
 as they affected the public interest in their several depart- 
 ments; which report of them Congress should cause to be 
 read in their respective houses, and entered on their minutes. 
 This is passed over without notice. 
 
 4. I proposed that all public officers appointed by the 
 executive authority, should be amenable both to them and 
 
53 
 
 to the legislative power, and removable for just cause by 
 either of them. This is qualified by the Convention. 
 
 And in as miich as my sentiments in these respects were 
 either qualified or totally neglected by' the Convention, I 
 suppose they were wrong ; however, the whole matter is sub- 
 mitted to the politicians of the present age, and to our pos- 
 terity in future. 
 
 In sundry other things, the Convention have gone into 
 minutiae, e. g., respecting elections of President, Senators, 
 and Representatives in Congress, etc., which I proposed to 
 leave at large to the wisdom and discretion of Congress, and 
 of the several States. 
 
 Great reasons may doubtless be assigned for their decision, 
 and perhaps some little ones for mine. Time, the great 
 arbiter of all human plans, may, after a while, give his 
 decision ; but neither the Convention nor myself will prob- 
 ably live to feel either the exultation or mortification of his 
 approbation or disapprobation of either of our plans. 
 
 But if any of these questions should in future time become 
 objects of discussion, neither the vast dignity of the Conven- 
 tion, nor the low, unnoticed state of myself, will be at all 
 considered in the debates ; the merits of the matter, and the 
 interests connected with or arising out of it, will alone dictate 
 the decision. 
 
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