war had
been narrowly averted at least half a dozen times, had proved this
beyond all cavil. With almost any other people than the Americans civil
war would have come already. With all the vast future interests that
were involved in these quarrels looming up before their keen, sagacious
minds, it was a wonder that they had been kept from coming to blows.
Such self-restraint had been greatly to their credit. It was the blessed
fruit of more than a century of government by free discussion, while yet
these states were colonies, peopled by the very cream of English
freemen who had fought the decisive battle of civil and religious
freedom for mankind in that long crisis when the Invincible Armada was
overwhelmed and the Long Parliament won its triumphs. Such
self-restraint had this people shown in days of trial, under a vicious
government adopted in a time of hurry and sore distress. But late events
had gone far to show that it could not endure.

The words of Randolph's opening speech are worth quoting in this
connection. "The confederation," he said, "was made in the infancy of
the science of constitutions, when the inefficiency of requisitions was
unknown; when no commercial discord had arisen among states; when no
rebellion like that in Massachusetts had broken out; when foreign debts
were not urgent; when the havoc of paper money had not been foreseen;
when treaties had not been violated; and when nothing better could have
been conceded by states jealous of their sovereignty. But it offered no
security against foreign invasion, for Congress could neither prevent
nor conduct a war, nor punish infractions of treaties or of the law of
nations, nor control particular states from provoking war. The federal
government has no constitutional power to check a quarrel between
separate states; nor to suppress a rebellion in any one of them; nor to
establish a productive impost; nor to counteract the commercial
regulations of other nations; nor to defend itself against the
encroachments of the states. From the manner in which it has been
ratified in many of the states, it cannot be claimed to be paramount to
the state constitutions; so that there is a prospect of anarchy from the
inherent laxity of the government. As the remedy, the government to be
established must have for its basis the republican principle."

[Sidenote: The Virginia plan; a radical cure.]

Having thus tersely stated the whole problem, Randolph went on to
prese