But this is immaterial. The proposition was submitted to a
vote, and received the approval of only _one State_--Pennsylvania, of
which Mr. Morris and Mr. Wilson were both representatives. _Nine_ States
voted against it.[80]
Six days afterward (July 23d), in a discussion of the proposed
ratification of the Constitution by Conventions of the people of each
State, Mr. Gouverneur Morris--as we learn from Mr. Madison--"moved that
the reference of the plan [i.e., of the proposed Constitution] be made
to one General Convention, chosen and authorized by the people, to
consider, amend, and establish the same."[81]
Here the issue seems to have been more distinctly made between the two
ideas of people of the States and one people in the aggregate. The fate
of the latter is briefly recorded in the two words, "not seconded." Mr.
Morris was a man of distinguished ability, great personal influence, and
undoubted patriotism, but, out of all that assemblage--comprising, as it
did, such admitted friends of centralism as Hamilton, King, Wilson,
Randolph, Pinckney, and others--there was not one to sustain him in the
proposition to incorporate into the Constitution that theory which now
predominates, the theory on which was waged the late bloody war, which
was called a "war for the Union." It failed for want of a second, and
does not even appear in the official journal of the Convention. The very
fact that such a suggestion was made would be unknown to us but for the
record kept by Mr.
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