years, and when it is considered that the British Govt. was, in every branch, irresponsible to the American people, whilst every branch of the Federal Government is responsible to the States and the people as their Constituents, it might well occur on a general view of the subject, that in an effectual reform of the Federal system, as much power might be safely instrusted to the new Govt. as was allowed to G.B. in the old one.
An early idea taken up by J. M. with a view to the security of a Govt. for the Union, and the harmony of the State Governments, without allowing to the former an unlimited and consolidated power, appears to have been a negative on the State laws, to be vested in the Senatorial branch of the Govt; but under what modifications does not appear. This again is made a special charge against him. That he became sensible of the obstacles to such an arrangement, presented in the extent of the Country, the number of the States and the multiplicity of their laws, can not be questioned. But is it wonderful that among the early thoughts on a subject so complicated and full of difficulty, one should have been turned to a provision in the compound and on this point analogous system of which this Country had made a part; substituting for the distant, the independent & irresponsible authority of a King which had rendered the provision justly odius, an elective and responsible authority within ourselves.
It must be kept in mind that the radical defect of the old confederation lay in the power of the States to comply with to disregard or to counteract the authorisd requisitions & regulations of Congress that a radical cure for this fatal defect, was the essential object for which the reform was instituted; that all the friends of the reform looked for such a cure; that there could therefore be no question but as to the mode of effecting it. The deputies of Virga. to the Convention, consisting of G. W. Govr. R. &c appear to have proposed a power in Congs. to repeal the unconstitutional and interfering laws of the States. The proposed negative on them, as the Journals shew, produced an equal division of the Votes. In every proceeding of the Convention where the question of paramountship in the laws of the Union could be involved, the necessity of it appears to have been taken for granted. The mode of controuling the legislation of the States which was finally preferred has been already noticed. Whether it be the best mode, experience is to decide. But the necessity of some adequate mode of preventing the States in their individual characters, from defeating the Constitutional authority of the States in their united character, and from collisions among themselves, had been decided by a past experience. (It may be thought
