Carolina to the other States, if she refuses to adopt? "She will be a foreign State," said Davie, "and can communicate with the United States only through embassadors." "What then," it was asked, "becomes of the faith plighted by the Articles of Confederation? If some

States can absolve themselves at will from the obligations of those, why not from the obligations of the Constitution." In the Federal Convention the same inquiry had been made: "If nine States can withdraw from thirteen, why not six from nine, four from six?" Answer was avoided there, but not in the Convention of North Carolina.

"The great principle," said Iredell, "the fundamental principle upon which our government is founded, is the safety of the people. For their welfare government is instituted, and this ought to be its object, whatever its form. Our governments have clearly been created by the people themselves; the same authority that created can destroy, and the people may undoubtedly change the government, not because it is ill-exercised, but because they conceive that another form will be more conducive to their welfare. It is suggested that, though ten States have adopted the Constitution, they had no right to dissolve the old Confederation, that the Articles still subsist, and the old Union remains, of which we are a part. That this is true may well be doubted. All writers agree that, if the principles of a Constitution are violated, the Constitution itself is dissolved, or may be, at the pleasure of the parties to it. The principles of the Confederation have not seldom been violated, and North Carolina, as well as others, has been an offender. This Constitution is proposed to the thirteen States. The desire was, that all should agree; but, if not, care was taken that at least nine might save themselves from destruction."

Davie took other ground: "It is said that it is a rule

of law that the same solemnities are necessary to annul as were necessary to create or establish a compact; and that, as thirteen States created, so thirteen States must concur in the dissolution of the Confederacy. This may be the talk of a lawyer or a judge, but is not the talk of a politician. Every man of common sense knows that political power is political right. In every republican community, whether confederated or separate, a majority binds the minority.* The voice of the majority of the people of America gave the Confederation validity; the same authority can and will annul it. Adoption places us in the Union; rejection extinguishes the right.'

If Iredell was right, the claimants under the Articles of Confederation had no cause of complaint; if Davie was right, it made no difference if they had, and therefore both, with Johnston, urged adoption by arguments which reason could not answer. "You will, you admit, be satisfied with this Constitution if amended; adopt, and your strength, added to that of those States, eager for the same amendments, can carry them; reject, and your weakness will count against you, in place of your strength counting for you. Adopt, and you can help shape the new government and share in the feast; reject now, and when you adopt, as you eventually must, you will have to accept the shaping of others, and find only the crumbs."

Upon the motion to ratify, the yeas were 84, and the

* Pennsylvania is an illustration. The charter of that colony reserved to Great Britain the right of taxation. Her claims to independence could not, therefore, have been based upon an invasion of charter liberties, that usurpation of an unwarranted jurisdiction denounced by the other colonies, but must have rested upon an inherent right in one community, upon its judgment of the necessity to renounce a political connection with another. Two speeches of great ability, made in her Convention, in advocacy of ratification of the Constitution, exist, though other record of debate is lost. Neither recognizes any obligation of faith under the Articles of Confederation, and they differ as to the character and effect of the instrument they recommend.

nays 184. Upon the motion neither to adopt nor reject, the yeas were 184, and the nays 84. By the same vote any impost passed by the United States was recommended to be passed by the Legislature of North Carolina, the proceeds to be held at the disposition of Congress.

The motive of the majority, if surmise be permissible, was to serve the desire for amendments, the difference of opinion between the majority and minority being as to whether such service would be more efficient by presence in, or absence from, the councils of the new Union.

At the first session of Congress, held in the city of New York, 4th of March, 1789, twelve amendments were proposed to the Legislatures of the States, of which ten were adopted. On the 11th of January, 1790, the President communicated to both Houses of Congress the ratification of the Constitution by North Carolina.

THE SOUTH CAROLINA CONVENTION,

1788.

THE debates in the Convention of South Carolina are said to have been distinguished by the ability with which ratification was advocated and opposed, but no report of them is extant. A fragment remains; from that, from the vote upon the question, and from the debate in the Legislature, upon the motion for the call of a convention, some knowledge may be acquired of those who favored and those who opposed the adoption of the Constitution, and some conception of the reasoning upon which their action was based. What, in later years, was termed "the slave power," the professions, and the commercial class, as a general rule, were passionate adorers of the Constitution; the yeomanry of the upper parishes were obdurate skeptics. As in other States, favor and disfavor seem to have been largely local.

In the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, upon the motion for the call of a State Convention, after the Constitution had been read, Charles Pinckney, a delegate to the Federal Convention, opened the debate, by enumerating the causes which led to that Convention, and by stating that, when it met, the first question in the view of almost every member was, "Shall the old plan be amended, or a new one devised?" "Conscious that the Confederation, though possessing the outlines of a good government, was, strictly speaking, a league destitute of the elements of permanency and coercive operation, the Convention felt the necessity of establishing a government

which, instead of requiring the intervention of thirteen Legislatures between demand and compliance, operated upon the people in the first instance. Upon that point the members did not differ, however much they differed upon the question of power. Upon the distribution of influence, in a system possessing extensive national authorities, the compromise between the larger and the smaller States, though originally opposed by him, seemed far from injudicious. The judiciary, under wise management, would be the key-stone of the arch, for in peace more depended upon the integrity and energy of the judiciary than upon any other branch of the government. The Executive was not constructed upon a principle as firm and permanent as he could wish, but as much so as the genius and temper of the people would permit. As commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces, he could neither raise nor support them by his authority, and his negative upon laws could be overridden. He could not make a treaty, nor appoint to office, without the concurrence of a Senate, in which the States had each an equal voice. In a Union so extensive as this would be, composed of so many State governments, inhabited by a people characterized, as our citizens are, by an impatience of any act which looks like an infringement of their rights, an invasion of them by the Federal head appeared the most remote of all public dangers. To what limits a republic of States may extend, how far it may be capable of uniting the liberty of a small commonwealth with the safety of a peaceful empire, whether among the co-ordinate powers dissensions and jealousies may not arise, which, for the want of a common superior, will proceed to fatal extremities, were questions upon which the example of any nation did not authorize decision. It was an experiment admittedly, but an experiment which could be made upon a scale so extensive, and under circumstances so promising, as to be