were misrepresented; they were spoken of as men of contracted views, of narrow prejudices; and their preference for the State governments was attributed to the preponderance they possessed in them, and to a consciousness that their greatness and power were derived from local prejudices and from their skill in fomenting them. Hence was inferred their hostility to an efficient federal government, whose extensive affairs they were incapable of managing, and in which, consequently, it was alleged that they would not retain the influence they possessed at home.
Although I unite fully in condemning the course pursued by the Anti-Federalists in respect as well to the Constitution as to their refusal to grant an adequate revenue to the federal head, and the right to regulate commerce, I regard those imputations which ascribed to them a readiness to sacrifice the great interests of the country to merely factious purposes, as the ebullitions of party spleen produced by party jealousies, as unjust and unfounded as was the charge brought forward by the old Republican party against Alexander Hamilton of a design to plunge the country into war with France to subserve the wishes and interests of England. I do not think there were ten in every hundred of that party who did not believe that imputation well founded, and most of them went to their graves without having yielded that conviction. I came upon the political stage when this matter was only viewed in the retrospect, and am free to say that I even believed that, if there was any thing true in the party criminations of the preceding era, this was so. Judge, then, of my surprise, on discovering from his papers, as well as from those of some of his contemporaries recently published, that there was probably no man in the country more sincerely anxious to prevent a war with France; that he applied his great mind incessantly to that object; that he was willing, indeed desirous, to send either Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Madison as one of the commissioners to negotiate with France, a proposition in respect to which he could not obtain the concurrence of either Mr. Adams or his cabinet, the latter of whom were sufficiently prompt to adopt his advice save when it conflicted with their party prejudices; and that so far from acting on that occasion at the instigation or to promote the policy of Great Britain, although entertaining strong—in my opinion too strong—preferences for England as between her and France, he was, in respect to every thing that affected the interests of his own country, purely and strictly American. Of this no man, whose mind is not debauched by prejudice, can entertain a doubt on reading the papers referred to.
The imputations upon the motives of the Anti-Federalists were of the same general stamp and origin. It was too soon for those who were yet fresh from the self-sacrificing and patriotic struggle on the field of the Revolution, where they had nobly done their duty, to fall under the influence of such petty motives as were attributed to them. Like their opponents, they might and did peril much of their own standing to further political views of great magnitude which they honestly, if erroneously, believed would promote the welfare of their country; but base incentives and merely factious calculations are not predicable of the times or of the men.
We should be slow to attribute narrow views to a political party to whose principal leaders, more than to any other portion of the Whigs, we owe the great change in the character of our Revolutionary struggle by which the assertion of Independence was substituted for the demand of a redress of grievances.
If the Anti-Federal party had been accused of cherishing morbid and impracticable ideas on the subject of a general government, the charge would have come nearer the truth. Many of them had so vivid a recollection of cruelties practiced upon their fathers, and had themselves seen and felt so much of the tyranny of the mother country, as to destroy all hope on their part that political power could be vested in remote hands, without the certainty of its being abused. Although they may have been right in respect to the monarchical preferences of many who were the most zealous for a convention, still they overrated the danger that such views would be encouraged by that body, and in their apprehensions of subsequent efforts to establish monarchical institutions here, they did not sufficiently appreciate an existing security against the accomplishment of such an object, the character and adequacy of which shall be hereafter noticed. We have every reason to believe that they regarded the project of a general convention as involving, if successful, the fate of republican principles in this country; and under the influence of feelings of so sombre a character, their course, as a party, was, it must be admitted, substantially adverse to any change, content rather to bear the ills they had than to encounter others of which they knew not the precise extent, but which they dreaded more. In this they fell behind the progress of events.
If our Revolutionary contest had terminated in a compromise with the mother country, as was for a long time expected, the existing system, with the amendments which would then have been generally favored, might have sufficed. It might have answered all the purposes contemplated by that which Franklin took so much pains to establish in 1755. But when our country had taken her position among the nations of the earth as a sovereign and independent power, she acquired rights and incurred obligations which could not be properly cared for by any agency short of a well-constructed and efficient general government, and the existing organization was neither. By an efficient government I do not mean one capable of absorbing or neutralizing the State authorities, or not fully responsible for the faithful exercise of the powers conferred upon it, or possessing more power than was necessary for the discharge of all the duties assigned to it, but one amply furnished with the ability to discharge them by its own means. To this end it was necessary that it should have competent and well organized executive, legislative, and judicial departments, and at least the power requisite to raise its necessary revenues from the people directly. To all this the Anti-Federal party was opposed, and therein it was wrong. The risk of having exceptionable principles incorporated into the Constitution was one that had to be encountered at some time, and there were cogent reasons for meeting it then. The condition of the country, in regard to its credit and other interests, presented an argument of great urgency for the necessity of a competent government. But above all other considerations stood the fact that the Convention had proposed for the approval of the people and the States a constitution which, when interpreted according to its plain and obvious meaning, conferred on the government proposed by it powers fully adequate to the public service, but none from which danger could be apprehended to any interest. That this was so is no longer an open question. Time and experience have demonstrated the error of the Anti-Federalists, who, under the influence of strong prejudices, although doubtless honestly, thought differently. No one will now question the devotion of the people, for whose benefit it was framed, and who are the best judges in the matter, to the existing system. With full power to alter or abolish it, they have lived under it for the greater part of a century, without making or desiring to make any essential alterations in its structure. By the exercise of those powers only which were plainly given by the Constitution to the government established by its authority and expressed on its face, in regard to which there has been no dispute, and which were at the times of its adoption well understood by those who made and those who adopted it, our country has prospered and grown to its present greatness. I say by those powers only, because the spurious interpolations which have from time to time been attempted have in no instance been productive of good.
The Convention was held with closed doors, and the result of its labors was not known to the public before it was communicated to Congress, nor the particulars of its proceedings, the votes, resolutions, and speeches, till many years afterwards. The public mind, and especially the Anti-Federal portion of it, was impressed by those circumstances, operating upon long entertained suspicions, with the most unfavorable anticipations in respect to the character of the instrument that had been agreed upon. All found it so different from what it was feared by many that it would be, and so many received it according to its real merits, that it carried a large preponderance of the public sentiment, drawn from both parties, to the conclusion that it ought not to be, and could not with safety be rejected. The reflection of this sentiment was distinctly seen in the action of Congress. It had given its assent to the holding of a Convention, without which that body would not have met; but it had, as we have seen, restricted its action in two most important points: 1st, that the Convention should limit its action to a revision of the Articles of Confederation and to suggestions for their improvement; and, 2d, that its doings should be reported to Congress, to be submitted to the States, under those Articles which required the assent of every State
