questions, ‘What has been, and what is now the influence of the State governments on the Federal system? To obtain anything like a check on the rashness of democracy, it was necessary not only to organize the legislature into different bodies, (for that alone is a poor expedient,) but to endeavor that these bodies should be animated by a different spirit. To this end the States in their corporate capacity were made electors of the Senate; and so long as the State governments had considerable influence, and the consciousness of dignity, which that influence imparts, the Senate felt something of the desired sentiment, and answered in some degree the end of its institution. But that day is past.
This opens to our view a dilemma, which was not unperceived when the Constitution was formed. If the State influence should continue, the union could not last; and, if it did not, the utility of the Senate would cease. It was observed in the Convention at an early day, by one who had afterwards a considerable share of the business, when the necessity of drawing a line between national sovereignty and State independence was insisted on, ‘that, if Aaron’s rod could not swallow the rods of the Magicians, their rods would swallow his.’ But it is one thing to perceive a dilemma, and another thing to get out of it. In the option between two evils, that which appeared to be the least was preferred, and the power of the union provided for. At present the influence of the general government has so thoroughly pervaded every State, that all the little wheels are obliged to turn according to the great one.
ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅣ. Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering.[1]
While I sat in the Convention, my mind was too much occupied by the interests of our country to keep notes of what we had done. Some gentlemen, I was told, passed their evenings in transcribing speeches from shorthand minutes of the day. They can speak positively on matters, of which I have little recollection. My faculties were on the stretch to further our business, remove impediments, obviate objections, and conciliate jarring opinions. All which I can now do is to ask myself what I should do were questions stated anew; for, in all probability, what I should now do would be what I then did, my sentiments and opinions having undergone no essential change in forty years.
Propositions to countenance the issue of paper money, and the consequent violation of contracts, must have met with all the oppo-
- ↑ Jared Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, Ⅲ, 322–323.
