s: "If, to please the people, we offer what we
ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us
raise a standard to which the wise and just can repair."

Working with a sad sincerity and with despair in their hearts, this
little band of men wrought a work of surpassing importance, and if they
did not receive the immediate plaudits of the living generation, their
shades can at least solace themselves with the reflection that posterity
has acclaimed their work as one of the greatest political achievements
of man.

The rules of order and the nature of the proceedings thus determined,
the convention opened by an address by Mr. Randolph of Virginia, in
which he submitted, in the form of fifteen points--nearly the number of
the fatal fourteen--the outlines for a new government. He himself in his
opening speech summarized the propositions by candidly confessing "that
they were not intended for a federal government" (thereby meaning a mere
league of States) but "a strong consolidated union." Upon this radical
change the convention was to argue earnestly and at times bitterly for
many a weary day. The plan provided for a national legislature of which
the lower branch should be elected by the people and the upper branch by
the lower branch upon the nomination of the legislatures of the States.
This legislature should enjoy all the legislative rights given to the
federation, and there followed the sweeping grant that it "could
legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent or
in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the
exercise of individual legislation," with power "to negative all laws
passed by the several States contravening in the opinion of the national
legislature the Articles of the Union."

A national executive was proposed, together with a national judiciary,
and these two bodies were given authority "to examine every act of the
national legislature before it shall operate and every act of a
particular legislature before a negative thereon shall be final." This
marked an immense advance over the Articles of Confederation, under
which there was no national executive or judiciary, and under which the
legislature had no direct power over the citizens of the States, and
could only impose duties upon the States themselves by the concurrence
of nine of the thirteen.

Hardly had Mr. Randolph submitted the so-called Virginia plan when
Charles Pinckney, of South