individual capacity, would ever have expected or desired to have been appealed to, on the present occasion, in violation of the rights of their respective States, if the favorers of the proposed constitution, imagining they had a better chance of forcing it to be adopted by a hasty appeal to the people at large, who could not be so good judges of the dangerous consequence, had not insisted upon this mode. Nor do these positions in the least interfere with the principle, that all power originates from the people; because, when once the people have exercised their power in establishing and forming themselves into a State government, it never devolves back to them, nor have they a right to resume or again to exercise that power, until such events take place as will amount to a dissolution of their State government. And it is an established principle, that a dissolution or alteration of a federal government doth not dissolve the State governments which compose it. It was also my opinion, that, upon principles of sound policy, the agreement or disagreement to the proposed system ought to have been by the State legislatures; in which case, let the event have been what it would, there would have been but little prospect of the public peace being disturbed thereby. Whereas, the attempt to force down this system, although Congress and the respective State legislatures should disapprove, by appealing to the people, and to procure its establishment in a manner totally unconstitutional, has a tendency to set the State governments and their subjects at variance with each other, to lessen the obligations of government, to weaken the bands of society, to introduce anarchy and confusion, and to light the torch of discord and civil war throughout this continent. All these considerations weighed with me most forcibly against giving my assent to the mode by which it is resolved this system is to be ratified, and were urged by me in opposition to the measure.
[107] I have now, Sir, in discharge of the duty I owe to this House, given such information as hath occurred to me, which I consider most material for them to know; and you will easily perceive, from this detail, that a great portion of that time, which ought to have been devoted calmly and impartially to consider what alterations in our federal government would be most likely to procure and preserve the happiness of the Union, was employed in a violent struggle on the one side to obtain all power and dominion in their own hands, and on the other to prevent it; and that the aggrandizement of particular States and particular individuals, appears to have been much more the object sought after, than the welfare of our country.
[108] The interest of this State, not confined merely to itself,
