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the amendments proposed will be a part of the system."

It is a curious fact that eighteen members of the Massachusetts convention, Hancock among them, had been engaged in Shays's Rebellion for the cancellation of debts. Rufus King and Samuel Adams contributed to securing a majority of nineteen of three hundred and thirty-three members.

What did New Hampshire do?

When the convention convened, the opponents to the Constitution were in the majority. The voters of the State were opposed to an act of ratification. An adjournment was carried, and, on reconvening, the delegates ratified the Constitution. They disobeyed the will of their constituents, being convinced, as were some other statesmen, by "the rhetoric of the Federalists"!

What was the course of Virginia?

Virginia, named for the virgin daughter of the Tudors, was first settled by charter, May, 1607, at Jamestown. In the dedication of Spencer's "Faerie Queene," Elizabeth is called "Queen of England, France, Ireland, and Virginia." Tucker says that "the first fœtal Commonwealth was the Old Dominion." In 1623-24 Virginia declared

that no tax could be laid on the Colony but by consent of the House of Burgesses. In 1645-46 this prophecy of the Revolution was repeated. In 1651-52 the Commonwealth of England made a treaty with Virginia, conceding the same freedom to her people as was enjoyed by the people of England; that no taxation nor forts nor garrisons should be imposed on her without the consent of her Assembly, and that body should transact her local affairs. During the Commonwealth, Virginia elected her governors.

Is it not consistent that Virginia now insisted on a Bill of Rights?

Jefferson, on his return from France, was amazed that personal and property and other essential rights were unprovided for in the Constitution.

In the Assembly of Virginia, November 14, 1788, an address was issued, asking Congress to call "a convention of deputies from the several States, with full power to take into consideration. the defects of the Constitution that have been suggested by the State conventions," and to "report such amendments thereto as they shall find suited to the common interests, and to secure to ourselves and the latest posterity the great and inalienable rights of mankind.” A second

convention was not called, but amendments were passed by joint resolution in Congress, and submitted to the legislatures of the States for ratification. Had the amendments not become a part of the Constitution, revolution would have followed.

The State of Virginia had led, in the colonial era, in the war for "redress of grievances" within the British Union, and afterwards in the war for independence. She was called the "mother of States and of statesmen" in the after-time, because she had given to the Union Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and a galaxy of Presidents, jurists, and politicians of great lustre. It was a proud and deserved title, and she has, as a sovereign lady should, worn her honors with distinguished dignity. Virginia should be painted as the mother of the Gracchi, always pointing to her children as her jewels, was the sentiment of Calhoun, and the artist idea of the civilized world.

Can you name some of the men of the Virginia convention of 1788?

Yes. James Madison, who had been conspicuous in shaping the Constitution; John Marshall, James Monroe, George Mason, "the lord of Gunston Hall," a man of transcendent

talents, and an active participator in the formation of the first Constitution of Virginia in 1776, and a deputy to the "Federal convention" at Philadelphia; Wilson Carey Nicholas, afterwards Governor of Virginia; Governor Edmund Randolph; Edmund Pendleton, an eminent jurist, and President of the Court of Appeals; Henry Lee, the "Light-horse Harry" of the Revolution, and subsequently Governor of the State and historian of the Southern war; Bushrod Washington, at nephew of George Washington; George Wythe, also a deputy to the Philadelphia convention, and Chancellor of the State, called by Jefferson the "Cato of his country, but without the avarice of the Roman;" James Innis, an eloquent lawyer, and Attorney-General of the State; Patrick Henry, the great orator, whose eloquence, beautifully says John Scott of Fauquier, came to him. "as the song to the nightingale; " Benjamin Harrison, the father of President William Henry Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Governor of the State in 1781; William Grayson, a colonel in the army, Representative and Senator in Congress; Theodorick Bland, an active officer of the Revolution, and a member of the family of Washington; George Grayson, a deputy to the Philadelphia convention, a lawyer and statesman of ability.

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James Madison, often claimed to be the "father of the Constitution," was a young man of some thirty-seven years, ample browed, small, alert, patient, and preeminently logical. He made short speeches, pressed to the point in debate at once, and met with skill and precision the eloquent onslaughts and persistent objections of Henry, the leader of the opposition to ratification. The matchless orator was not equal to the strategist of Montpelier, whose reserve could not be easily disturbed, and which always gave him advantage.

Madison has been called a dissembler, but the fact seems to be that he feared the thirteen States would disintegrate and drift back to Great Britain unless the Constitution was ratified. Hamilton had the same fear. He accepted the Constitution only as a compromise.

In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Act of the Adams administration, Madison flung out the flag of State sovereignty. The reserved gentleman, who afterwards seemed to grow smaller under the nodding plumes of Queen Dolly of the White House, was a statesman of large dimensions when he was called to a battle of political ethics. It was strange that in the Virginia convention one of the authors of the "Federalist" should be

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