.

Our first essay, in America, to establish a federative government
had fallen, on trial, very short of its object. During the war of
Independence, while the pressure of an external enemy hooped us
together, and their enterprises kept us necessarily on the alert,
the spirit of the people, excited by danger, was a supplement to the
Confederation, and urged them to zealous exertions, whether claimed by
that instrument or not; but, when peace and safety were restored, and
every man became engaged in useful and profitable occupation, less
attention was paid to the calls of Congress. The fundamental defect
of the Confederation was, that Congress was not authorized to act
immediately on the people, and by its own officers. Their power was
only requisitory, and these requisitions were addressed to the several
Legislatures, to be by them carried into execution, without other
coercion than the moral principle of duty. This allowed, in fact, a
negative to every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; a
negative so frequently exercised in practice, as to benumb the action
of the Federal government, and to render it inefficient in its general
objects, and more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The
want, too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary
functions, worked disadvantageously in practice. Yet this state of
things afforded a happy augury of the future march of our Confederacy,
when it was seen that the good sense and good dispositions of the
people, as soon as they perceived the incompetence of their first
compact, instead of leaving its correction to insurrection and civil
war, agreed, with one voice, to elect deputies to a general Convention,
who should peaceably meet and agree on such a Constitution as 'would
ensure peace, justice, liberty, the common defence, and general
welfare.'

This Convention met at Philadelphia on the 25th of May, '87. It sat with
closed doors, and kept all its proceedings secret, until its dissolution
on the 17th of September, when the results of its labors were published
all together. I received a copy, early in November, and read and
contemplated its provisions with great satisfaction. As not a member of
the Convention, however, nor probably a single citizen of the Union, had
approved it in all its parts, so I, too, found articles which I thought
objectionable. The absence of express declarations ensuring freedom
of religion, freedom of the press,