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came a subject of discussion in the
Virginia ratifying Convention.
Patrick Henry, with the prevision of a prophet, was, as we have seen, bitterly opposed to the adoption of the
Constitution.
He was its enemy
a l'outrance. Not having been a member of the
Convention, of 1787, that framed the instrument, and being unacquainted with the circumstances above detailed, relative to the change which had been made in the phraseology of its Preamble, he attacked the
Constitution on the very ground since assumed by
Webster and Story, to wit: that the instrument itself proclaimed that it had been ‘ordained and established’ by the people of the
United States in the aggregate, instead of the people of the States.
Mr. Madison replied to Henry on this occasion.
Madison had been in the
Convention, knew, of course, all about the change of phraseology in question, and this was his reply: ‘The parties to it [the
Constitution] were the people, but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.
If it were a consolidated government,’ continued he, ‘the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient to establish it. But it was to be binding on the people of a State only by their own separate consent.’
There was, of course, nothing more to be said, and the Virginia Convention adopted the
Constitution.
Madison has been called the Father of the Constitution.
Next to him, Alexander Hamilton bore the most conspicuous part in procuring it to be adopted by the people.
Hamilton, as is well known, did not believe much in republics; and least of all did he believe in federal republics.
His great object was to establish a consolidated republic, if we must have a republic at all. He labored zealously for this purpose, but failed.
The States, without an exception, were in favor of the federal form; and no one knew better than Hamilton the kind of government which had been established.
Now let us hear what Hamilton, an unwilling, but an honest witness, says on this subject.
Of the eighty-five articles in the ‘Federalist,’ Hamilton wrote no less than fifty.
Having failed to procure the establishment of a consolidated government, his next great object was, to procure the adoption by the States of
