favor of an unlimited Govt. founded on a consolidation of the States; and that neither Mr. Randolph, nor any one of his colleagues was of the number. His propositions were the result of a meeting of the whole Deputation, and concurred or acquiesced in unanimously, merely as a general introduction of the business; such as might be expected from the part Virginia had in bringing about the Convention, and as might be detailed, and defined in the progress of the work. The Journal shews that this was done.
I cannot but highly approve the industry with which you have searched for a key to the sense of the Constitution, where alone the true one can be found; in the proceedings of the Convention, the cotemporary expositions, and above all in the ratifying Conventions of the States. If the instrument be interpreted by criticisms which lose sight of the intention of the parties to it, in the fascinating pursuit of objects of public advantage or conveniency, the purest motives can be no security against innovations materially changing the features of the Government.
ⅭⅭⅭⅬⅦ. James Madison to Thomas Cooper.[1]
The mail has furnished me with a copy of your Lectures on Civil Government, & on the constitution of the U.S. I find in them much in which I concur; parts on which I might say—non liquet—& others from which I should dissent; but none, of which interesting veiws are not presented. What alone I mean to notice is a passage in which you have been misled by the authorities before you, & by a misunderstanding of the term “National” used in the early proceedings of the Convention of 1787. Both Mr. Yates & Mr. Martin brought to the Convention predispositions agt. its object, the one from Maryland representing the party of Mr. Chase opposed to federal restraints on the State Legislation; the other from New York, the party unwilling to lose the power over trade through which the State levied a tribute on the consumption of its neighbours. Both of them left the Convention long before it compleated its work; & appear to have reported in angry terms, what they had observed with jaundiced eyes. Mr. Martin is said to have recanted at a later day; & Mr. Yates to have changed his politics & joined the party adverse to that which sent him to the Convention.—With respect to the term “National” as contradistinguished from the term “federal,” it was not meant to express the extent of power, but the mode of its operation, which was to be not like the power of the
- ↑ Documentary History of the Constitution, Ⅴ, 338–339.
