in 1754, advised that the commander-in-chief, attended by one commissioner from each colony, whose election should be subject to one negative of the king by the royal council and another by the royal governor, should adjust the quotas of each colony, which were then to be enforced by the authority of parliament. This plan was suppressed by impending war. Great Britain having, with the lavish aid of her colonies, driven France from Canada, needed them no more as allies in war. From 1762 to 1765 the problem was how to create a grand system of empire. James Otis, of Boston, would have had all kingdoms and all outlying possessions of the crown wrought into the flesh and blood and membership of one organization; but this advice, which would have required home governments for every kingdom and for every colony, and, for general affairs, one imperial parliament representing the whole, found no favor. In those days of aristocratic rule, the forming of a grand plan of union was assigned by the Bedford faction to George Grenville, a statesman bred to the law, the impersonation of idolatry of the protective system as the source of British prosperity, and of faith in the omnipotence of the British parliament as the groundwork of British liberty. He sought to unite the thirteen colonies in their home administration by the prerogative; in their home legislation by a royal veto of acts of their own legislatures; in the establishment of their general revenue and the regulation of their commerce by acts of the British parliament. And now came into the view of the world the rare aptitude of the colonies for concert and organization. James Otis, in the general court of Massachusetts, spoke the word for an American congress, and in 1765 nine of the thirteen met at New York: the British parliament aimed at consolidating their administration without their own consent, and did but force them to unite in the denial of its power. The truest and greatest Englishman of that century breasted the heaving wave and by his own force stayed it, but only for the moment. An aristocratic house of commons, piqued and vexed at its own concession, imposed a tax on the colonies in the least hateful form that it could devise; and in 1773 the hardly sound of tea-chests, falling into Boston harbor, startled the nations with the news of a united and resistant America. In 1774 the British parliament thought proper to punish Boston and attempt coercion by arms; "delegates of the inhabitants" of twelve American colonies in a continental congress acted as one in a petition to the king. The petition was not received. Six months before the declaration of independence, Thomas Paine, in "Common Sense," had written and published to the world: "Nothing but a continental form of government can keep the peace of the continent.* Let a CONTINENTAL CONFERENCE be held,† to frame a CONTINENTAL CHARTER, drawing the line of business and jurisdiction between members of congress and members of assembly, always remembering that our strength and happiness are continental, not provincial. The bodies chosen conformably to said charter shall be the legislators and governors of this continent.# We have every opportunity and every encouragement to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth." The continental convention which was to frame the constitution for the union was to represent both the colonies and the people of each colony; its members were to be chosen, two by congress from the delegation of each colony, two by the legislature of each colony out of its own body, and five directly by the people.^ Great Britain offered its transatlantic dominions no unity but under a parliament in which they were not represented; the people of thirteen colonies by special instructions to their delegates in congress, on the fourth of July 1776, declared themselves to be states, independent and united, and began the search for a fitting constitution. In their first formative effort they missed the plain road of English and American experience. They had rightly been jealous of extending the supremacy of England, because it was a government outside of themselves; they now applied that jealousy to one another, forgetting that the general power * Common Sense: original edition of 8 January 1776, p. 51. + Ibid., 55. Ibid., 56. # Ibid., 56. | Appendix, annexed to second edition of Common Sense, 14 February 1776. A Common Sense, original edition, 55. would be in their own hands. Joseph Hawley of Massachusetts had, in November 1775, advised annual parliaments of two houses; the committee for framing the confederation, misled partly by the rooted distrust for which the motive had ceased, and partly by erudition which studied Hellenic councils and leagues as well as later confederacies, took for its pattern the constitution of the United Provinces, with one house and no central power of final decision. These evils were nearly fatal to the United Provinces themselves, although every one of them could be reached by a messenger within a day's journey; and here was a continent of states which could not be consulted without the loss of many months, and would ever tend to anarchy from the want of agreement in their separate delibera tions. Hopeless of a good result from the deliberations of congress on a confederation, Edward Rutledge, in August 1778, in a letter to Robert R. Livingston, avowed his readiness to 'propose that the states should appoint a special congress, to be composed of new members, for this purpose." * The necessities of the war called into being, north of the Potomac, successive conventions of a cluster of states. In August 1780, a convention of the New England states at Boston declared for a more solid and permanent union with one supreme head, and "a congress competent for the government of all those common and national affairs which do not nor can come within the jurisdiction of the particular states." At the same time it issued an invitation for a convention of the New England states, New York, and "others that shall think proper to join them," + to meet at Hartford. The legislature of New York approved the measure. "Our embarrassments in the prosecution of the war," such was the message of Governor George Clinton on the fourth of September, at the opening of the session, "are chiefly to be attributed to a defect of power in those who ought to exercise a supreme jurisdiction; for, while congress only recommends and the different states deliberate upon the propriety of the * Rutledge to Livingston, August 1776. MS. + Hough's Convention of New England States at Boston, 50, 52. Duane to Washington, 19 September 1780. Letters to Washington, iii., 92. recommendation, we cannot expect a union of force or council." The senate answered in the words of Philip Schuyler: "We perceive the defects of the present system, and the necessity of a supreme and coercive power in the government of these states; and are persuaded that, unless congress are authorized to direct uncontrollably the operations of war and enabled to enforce a compliance with their requisitions, the common force can never be properly united." * Meantime Alexander Hamilton in swiftness of thought outran all that was possible. Early in September, in a private letter to James Duane, then a member of congress, he took up the proposal, which, nearly five years before, Thomas Paine had made known, and advised that a convention of all the states should meet on the first of the following November, with full authority to conclude finally and set in motion a "vigorous" general confederation. His ardor would have surprised the people into greater happiness without giving them an opportunity to view and reject his project.‡ Before the end of the year the author of "Common Sense " himself, publishing in Philadelphia a tract asserting the right of the United States to the vacant western territory, closed his argument for the "Public Good" with these words: "I take the opportunity of renewing a hint which I formerly threw out in the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' and which the several states will, sooner or later, see the convenience, if not the necessity, of adopting; which is, that of electing a continental convention, for the purpose of forming a continental constitution, defining and describing the powers of congress. To have them marked out legally will give additional energy to the whole, and a new confidence to the several parts.' "" # "Call a convention of the states, and establish a congress upon a constitutional footing," wrote Greene, after taking command of the southern army, to a member of congress. On the eleventh of November able representatives from Hough's Convention, 63-65. + Hamilton to Duane, 3 September 1780. Hamilton, i., 157. Compare Mcllenry to Hamilton. Hamilton, i., 411. #Thomas Paine's Public Good. Original edition, 38. each of the four New England states and New York-John T. Gilman of New Hampshire, Thomas Cushing, Azor Orne, and George Partridge of Massachusetts, William Bradford of Rhode Island, Eliphalet Dyer and William Williams of Connecticut, John Sloss Hobart and Egbert Benson of New York -assembled at Hartford.* The lead in the convention was taken by the delegates from New York, Hobart, a judge of its supreme court, and Benson, its attorney-general.† At their instance it was proposed, as a foundation for a safe system of finance, to provide by taxes or duties a certain and inalienable revenue, to discharge the interest on any funded part of the public debt, and on future loans. As it had proved impossible to get at the valuation of lands, congress should be empowered to apportion taxes on the states according to their number of inhabitants, black as well as white. They then prepared a circular letter to all the states, in which they said: "Our embarrassments arise from a defect in the present government of the United States. All government supposes the power of coercion; this power, however, never did exist in the general government of the continent, or has never been exercised. Under these circumstances, the resources and force of the country can never be properly united and drawn forth. The states individually considered, while they endeavor to retain too much of their independence, may finally lose the whole. By the expulsion of the enemy we may be emancipated from the tyranny of Great Britain; we shall, however, be without a solid hope of peace and freedom unless we are properly cemented among ourselves." The proceedings of this convention were sent to every state in the union, to Washington, and to congress. They were read in congress on the twelfth of December 1780; and were *The names of all the delegates are given in Papers of the Old Congress, xxxiii., 391, MS. That New York took the lead appears from comparison of the message of Clinton in September and the circular letter of the convention; and from the public tribute of IIamilton to the New York delegates in the presence of Hobart. Hamilton, ii., 360. + Papers of the Old Congress, xxxiii., 391, containing copies of the credentials of the commissioners, the resolutions of the convention, and its letters to the several states, to congress, and to Washington. MS. |