XLVI. Nov. ley's ablest coadjutors, and ordained by him as a bishop, CHAPTER arrived at New York, bringing with him Wesley's plan of government and discipline for the Methodist Episcopal 1784. Church. This new sect spread rapidly, especially in Maryland and Virginia. It was principally among the wealthy and educated that the Church of England retained its hold." Among the poorer class in the Southern states, where that Church, prior to the Revolution, had been established by law, and where its disestablishment had left many parishes vacant, great inroads began already to be made upon it by the new Wesleyan Church. It had been proposed, at first, to exclude all slaveholders from the Methodist communion; but that exclusion was not persevered in. Out of the efforts of the Methodists and the competition which they excited, there grew a new religious revival, especially in the Middle and Southern states, by which, also, the Baptists and Presbyterians largely profited. The Presbyterians soon followed the example of the Episcopalians in arranging their church government on a national basis. The Synod of New York and Pennsylvania was divided into four synods, delegates from which 1788. annually met in a General Assembly. A sort of alliance had been formed between the Presbyterians and the Congregational churches of New England. The Consociation of Connecticut sent delegates to the General Assembly, not indeed as members, but as friendly embassadors and allies a practice afterward imitated by some other of the Congregational associations. In New England, however, the old leaven of Latitudinarianism was still deeply at work among the learned, while among the less educated classes the new doctrine of Universalism began to spread. CHAPTER CHAPTER XLVII. FORMATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. THE fourteenth of May was the day appointed for the meeting of the Convention to revise the Articles of Con1787. federation; but seven states were not present till eleven May 25. days later, when the Convention assembled in the chamber of the State House in Philadelphia, in which the Continental Congress, while resident in that city, had been accustomed to hold its sessions, and in which the independence of the United States had been declared. Washington was a member, and so was Franklin, for the two years since his return from Europe president of Pennsyl vania. As Franklin could be the only competitor for the place of president of the Convention, the nomination of Washington came gracefully from Robert Morris, on behalf of the Pennsylvania delegation. A secretary was chosen, and a committee appointed to report rules of proceeding. May 28-9. Upon the report of this committee rules were adopted, copied chiefly from those of Congress. As in Congress, each state was to have one vote; seven states were to constitute a quorum; all committees were to be appointed by ballot; the doors were to be closed, and an injunc tion of secrecy, never removed, was placed on the debates. The members were not even allowed to take copies of the entries on the journal. Eleven states were soon represented by about fifty delegates from among the most illustrious citizens of the states-men highly distinguished for talents, character, XLVII. practical knowledge, and public services. The aged CHAPTER Franklin had sat in the Albany Convention of 1754, in which the first attempt had been made at colonial union. 1787. Dickinson, who sat in the present Convention as one of the members from Delaware, William S. Johnson, of Connecticut, and John Rutledge, of South Carolina, had participated in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Besides Washington, Dickinson, and Rutledge, who had belonged to the Continental Congress of 1774, there were also present, from among the members of that body, Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, William Livingston, governor of New Jersey, George Read, of Delaware, and George Wythe, of Virginia; and of the signers of the Declaration of Independence-besides Franklin, Read, Wythe, and Sherman-Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, and Robert Morris, George Clymer, and James Wilson, of Pennsylvania. Eighteen members were at the same time delegates to the Continental Congress; and of the whole number there were only twelve who had not sat at some time in that body.. The officers of the Revolutionary army were represented by Washington, Mifflin, Hamilton, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who had been colonel of one of the South Carolina regiments, and at one time an aid-de-camp to Washington. Of those members who had come prominently forward since the declaration of independence, the most conspicuous were Hamilton, Madison, and Edmund Randolph, who had lately succeeded Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia. The members who took the leading part in the debates were Madison, Mason, and Randolph, of Virginia; Gerry, Gorham, and King, of Massachusetts; Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and Franklin, of Pennsylvania; Johnson, Sherman, and Ellsworth, of Connecticut; Hamilton and Lansing, of New York; Charles Cotes XLVIL CHAPTER Worth Pinckney and Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina-the latter chosen governor of that state the next 1787. year; Patterson, of New Jersey; Martin, of Maryland; Dickinson, of Delaware; and Williamson, of North Carolina. The Convention, as a whole, represented, in a marked manner, the talent, intelligence, and especially the conservative sentiment of the country. The democracy had no representatives, except so far as the universal American sentiment was imbued, to a certain degree, with the democratic spirit. Jefferson, the ablest and most enthusiastic defender of the capacity of the people for self-government, was absent in Europe, and that theory, of late, had been thrown a little into the shade by the existing condition of affairs, both state and national. The public creditors, especially, demanded some authority able to make the people pay; and, among a certain class, even monarchy begun to be whispered of as a remedy for popular maladministration. The Assembly of Rhode Island, under the lead of men without education or sound judgment, and some of them. without principle, wholly intent upon wiping out public and private debts by the agency of paper money, refused to elect delegates to the Convention; but a letter was read from some of the wealthiest men and most respectable citizens of that little state, in which they sent their good wishes, and promised their adhesion. As the Convention had met on the invitation of Virginia, it seemed to belong to the delegates of that state to give a start to the proceedings. Accordingly, Governor Randolph, at the request of his colleagues, opened May 29. the business in a set speech on the inefficiency of the confederation; after which he offered fifteen resolutions suggesting amendments to the existing federal system. XLVII. These resolutions proposed a national Legislature, to con- CHAPTER sist of two branches, the members of the first branch to be chosen by the people, and to be apportioned to the 1787. states in the ratio of free population or taxes; those of the second branch to be selected by the first branch, out of candidates nominated by the state Legislatures. A separate national executive was proposed, to be chosen by the national Legislature; also a national judiciary; and a council of revision, to consist of the executive and a part of the judiciary, with a qualified negative on every act of legislation, state as well as national. These resolutions of Randolph's, known as the "Virginia plan," were referred to a committee of the whole, as was a sketch submitted by Charles Pinckney, which, in its form and arrangement, seems to have furnished the outline of the Constitution as ultimately adopted. That, however, which is printed as Pinckney's sketch, contains many things which could hardly have been found in the original draft-interpolations, probably, from the subsequent proceedings of the Convention. At the very threshold of debate an important question arose, and at every step it threatened to recur, What was Could the the limit of the powers of the Convention? The delegates from the small states saw, or thought they saw, in the establishment of a strong national government, the speedy downfall of state sovereignty. They argued that, by the very terms of its appointment, the authority of the Convention was limited to amendment, without the power so to alter as, in fact, to destroy the existing system. The answer was, that one of Randolph's resolutions proposed to submit whatever might be now agreed upon to the sanction and approval of conventions |