Race-traits ers. Political training. reveal to the mind the full scope of the intellectual process moving behind them. This is eminently true of the proceedings of the federal convention. From the mere record it is impossible to grasp the full significance of all that transpired. In attempting to read the mind of the convention, the fact must be recognized that "under the shell there is an animal, and behind the document there is a man." 1 In the light of this truth the effort will be made to explain within a narrow compass, first, the sources whencc came the great thoughts that dominated the convention; second, what those great thoughts were; third, the forms which they finally assumed. An assembly could hardly have been convened in the of the fram- United Kingdom more English as to race and political training than that made up of the fifty-five delegates who composed the federal convention. The Virginia delegation was simply a brilliant group of English country gentlemen who had been reared on the right side of the Atlantic. Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris were born English subjects; the father of Franklin was an English emigrant from Northamptonshire; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had been educated at Oxford and the Middle Temple; Rutledge had studied law at the Temple; and James Wilson, the most far-sighted man perhaps in the whole convention, was born near St. Andrews in Scotland. As to political training, they had all been reared under the English system of local selfgovernment which had grown up alongside of the English customary law in the several states which they represented. These states they had helped to transform from English provinces into independent commonwealths whose constitutions were substantial reproductions of that of the English kingdom. In fine, the only practical conception of the state which they possessed was that embodied in the constitution of the old land modified as it had been in the new by the abolition of nobility, feudality, and kingship. So far as Blackstone scientific knowledge was concerned, the oracles usually consulted at that day were Blackstone and Montesquieu. The "Spirit of Laws" was studied by Washington as a part of his preparation for the work of the convention;2 and Madison and Montes quieu. 1 Taine, Hist. of Eng. Literature, vol. i. p. I. 2 Washington drew the outlines of three new constitutions, each one of tells us in the "Federalist," that "The British constitution. was to Montesquieu what Homer had been to the didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged; so this great political critic appears to have viewed the constitution of England as the standard, or, to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty." 1 which com the second tion. The first effort which American statesmen had made to Causes construct a federal constitution had resulted in something pelled the which was a radical departure from the whole course of making of their political experience. They had sought a model for the constitunew structure entirely outside of the political history of the mother country. The result was a fabric whose internal organization violated every political maxim with which they were familiar. It had no executive head; it had no judiciary; it vested and confused the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in one assembly instead of two; it had no power to enforce its mandates. No scheme of government ever elaborated with so much care ever proved a more complete and hopeless failure than that embodied in the articles of confederation. During the war, when executive force and financial promptness were most essential, it had failed to supply either. At the end of the war it found itself burdened with Financial difficulties a great debt for which it had no ability to provide a fact of the conwhich brought great discredit upon the new nationality. In federation. the hope of restoring the public credit an earnest effort was made in 1782 to give to congress the power to command a permanent revenue through the imposition and collection of a duty on imports.2 Two years after the refusal of the states to grant that power to congress, Robert Morris, the able. financier, who had so long stood up against every difficulty, gave up his hopeless task; and, after informing Marbois, the which aimed at the making of a stronger and more perfect union. See North Am. Review, xxv. p. 263; Bancroft, vol. i. p. 278. 1 No. xlvi. p. 334, Dawson's ed. 2 Such a power could only be bestowed through an amendment of the articles which required unanimous consent. At the close of 1782 all the states had assented except Rhode Isl- representative of France in America, that he could not even provide for the interest on the Dutch loan which France had guaranteed, on the first of November, 1784, finally retired from the office of superintendent of the finances of the United States.1 In the midst of the weariness, inaction, and confusion which existed at this time Marbois wrote to Rayneval: "The people, scarcely escaped from war, are already losing that public spirit which up to this time made good the want of energy in the government. There is neither congress, nor president, nor minister in any department. All matters, and especially those of finance, fall into a worse Root of the confusion than before." 2 The rock upon which the confedevil the req- eration had gone to wreck was the requisition system, under uisition system. which the federal treasury was practically dependent upon the states for voluntary contributions. Out of ten million dollars, called for by congress for the four years ending in 1786, only one fourth was actually collected. Under the pressure of such circumstances congress lost both prestige and authority; and by the time of the meeting of the federal convention the government of the confederation had practically disappeared. The country was beginning to be threat ened with anarchy, with dangers from within and dangers Four great from without. The pressure of these dangers brought into motives for the foreground four great motives for union. The English order in council of the 2d of July, 1783, as to the carrying trade between America and the British West Indies made it imperatively necessary that the states should vest in a central government the power to regulate and protect their foreign commerce; while other motives of self-interest made it equally necessary that such central power should be armed with the authority to govern the national domain, to provide a revenue for the satisfaction of the public creditors, and to protect domestic trade by prohibiting the states from impairing the obligation of contracts. As Madison expressed it in union. 1 See Bancroft, Hist. of the Const., vol. i. p. 165. Morris tendered his resignation to congress in January, 1783, but did not actually give up his post until November, 1784. See Ibid., p. 80. 2 November 20, 1784. Printed in Appendix to Bancroft, vol. i. p. 396. This is well brought out by Fiske in The Critical Period, etc., ch. iv., "Drifting toward Anarchy." 4 For a full statement of the four great motives, see Bancroft, vol. i. p. 146. chende Webster; a letter written to Lee in November, 1784: "The union of the states is essential to their safety against foreign dangers and internal contention; the perpetuity and efficiency of the present system cannot be confided in; the question, therefore, is, in what mode and at what moment the experiment for supplying the defects ought to be made." The utter worthlessness of the confederation and the pressing necessity for a new federal government were admitted on every hand. The difficulty was to find out how to construct something that would be adequate to the necessities of the new nationality. Experience had shown that a league based upon the requisition system was a mere rope of sand, and yet every other federal commonwealth that had ever existed down to that time had rested upon that impotent expedient. At this point The new necessity became the mother of invention, after a painful deathe political travail America gave birth to a novel and irresistible political bahnbre idea, what the Germans would call a path-breaking idea Idee: (bahnbrechende Idee). In February, 1783, Pelatiah Webster Pelatiah published at Philadelphia a tract entitled "A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the thirteen United States of North America," in which he not only advocated permanent courts of law and equity, and a stricter organization of the executive power, but also a national assembly of two chambers instead of one, with power not only to enact laws, but to enforce them on individuals as well as on states.2 A year later this tract, which had been reprinted at Hartford, Noah Web was followed by another of the same tenor by Noah Webster, of that place, in which he proposed "a new system of government which should act, not on the states, but directly on individuals, and vest in congress full power to carry its laws into effect." This brand-new idea which the Websters seem to have been the first to express, the idea of giving to the federal government the power to execute its laws not on states in their corporate capacity, but directly on individuals, - embodied the most important and far-reaching political principle to which our career as a nation has given birth. Of this new principle, after its incorporation into the present 1 Madison Papers, vol. ii. pp. 707, 708. 2 See P. Webster's Political Essays, p. 228. Madison Papers, vol. ii. p. 708. See ster; Tocqueville. The new idea be comes the new consti tution. constitution, Tocqueville said: "This constitution, which may at first be confounded with federal constitutions which. have preceded it, rests in truth upon a wholly novel theory which may be considered a great discovery in modern political science. In all the confederations which 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 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." 1 The "novel theory," the new self-sustaining principle which basis of the became the basis of the more perfect union, and superseded therein the impotent system of requisitions, having been propounded by two political thinkers from three to four years. before the meeting of the convention, must have been made the subject of careful consideration beforehand by those who were to give to it its first practical application. That it was the dominant idea in the convention itself is proven by the result, the framers made it the foundation of their immortal work. That it was so regarded at the time is proven by evidence both clear and abundant. Mr. Davie, of North Carolina, in advocating the new constitution in the convention in which his own state finally ratified it, said: "Another radical vice in the old system, which was necessary to be corrected, and which will be understood without a long deduction of reasoning, was, that it legislated on states, instead of individuals. . . . Every member saw that the existing system would be ineffectual, unless its laws operated on individuals, as military coercion was neither eligible or practical."2 In Hamilton. the New York convention Hamilton said: "We contend that Davie. 1 Democracy in America, vol. i. pp. 198, 199, Bowen's ed. A greater than Tocqueville has very recently restated the matter as follows: "Its central or national government is not a mere league, for it does not wholly depend on the component communities which we call the States. It is itself a common wealth as well as a union of common- |