Last Best Hope of Earth

Category: Constitution

  • Constitution Sunday: Major Martin Kingsley on the Excessive Powers of Congress

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 21, 1788

    A representative democracy requires that elected officials are servants to the people. There must be accountability, and with two-year terms for members of the House of Representatives, four-year terms for Presidents, and six-year terms for Senators, the Constitution has provided voters with the option to rotate their servants every two years. For Major Martin Kingsley, at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, the Constitution was inferior to the Articles of Confederation because there was insufficient checks on public servants.

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  • Constitution Sunday: A Sharp Exchange at the Massachusetts Convention

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 17, 1788

    For those debating the Constitution’s ratification, no detail of the draft document was forgotten. To detractors, like the Honorable Mr. Turner who rose on January 17, 1788 at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, there were hidden dangers throughout the document. One that he raised was that Congress “may alter the place for chusing representatives in the general Congress.” Turner, before the Convention, said to look to abuses of power: if members of Congress wished to help themselves, as people in power often do, then this is one way in which they may do so; they could alter the place to be inaccessible for three-fourths of the population. “The great law of self preservation will prevail,” Turner said, and it didn’t stop there. There were forces at work in the country that were changing the country and its people: “paper money, and the practice of privateering, have produced a gradual decay of morals—introduced pride—ambition—envy—lust of power—produced a decay of patriotism, and the love of commutative justice.” By giving this Constitution and the members of Congress this power, the Convention was creating the chance for abuse, and where that risk can be prevented, it should, so Turner reasoned.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Fisher Ames on Biennial Elections and on the Volcano of Democracy

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention.

    January 15, 1788

    The duration of a term for a member of the House of Representatives was a contentious issue: while some favored one-year terms, others—such as Fisher Ames—advocated for two-year terms. To Ames, a member of the House would be unlikely to learn enough about the country in a year to cast informed votes and to represent the interests of the people. Adding to that was the fact that the country was set to grow: Ames expressed his hope that the country would be home to “fifty millions of happy people” and that a member of the House would require at “least two years in office” to enable that member “to judge of the trade and interests of states which he never saw.” But, also at issue was the expression and suppression of the will of the people through their representatives.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Governor Samuel Huntington on the Need for Coercive National Power

    Connecticut Ratifying Convention.

    January 9, 1788

    When Connecticut’s Governor, Samuel Huntington, rose to speak at the state’s ratifying convention, he rose to second a motion by General Parsons to “assent to, ratify, and adopt the Constitution,” but in seconding the motion, Governor Huntington provided perspective and context for why he was asking the state’s delegates to ratify. To the Governor, the debate and potential ratification of the Constitution was “a new event in the history of mankind.—Heretofore, most governments have been formed by tyrants, and imposed on mankind by force.” This Constitution was being considered during a “time of peace and tranquility” and, “with calm deliberation,” the representatives were framing a novel system of government that accounted for the pitfalls that other governments had not avoided.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Oliver Ellsworth defends the Taxing Power and Comments on Dual Sovereignties and Judicial Review

    Connecticut Ratifying Convention

    January 7, 1788

    When the Connecticut Ratifying Convention assembled, there were objections against the draft Constitution on the basis that it was “despotic” in its bestowing great power upon Congress: to the objectors, Congress having both the power of the purse and the power of the sword was intolerable. Oliver Ellsworth, however, defended the Constitution as written. Ellsworth, who would later become a United States Senator and a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, had seen the ineffectiveness of those United States as existed under the Articles of Confederation and thus saw the draft Constitution as remedying the defects that caused that ineffectiveness.

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  • Constitution Sunday: James Wilson’s Summation and Final Rebuttal

    Constitution Sunday: James Wilson’s Summation and Final Rebuttal

    Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention.

    December 11, 1787

    Before concluding the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, James Wilson delivered a closing argument for ratifying the draft Constitution and took on many of his adversaries’ best arguments while presenting the most compelling reasons for adopting the Constitution. To detractors of the Constitution, a most glaring flaw in the document was its creation of a relatively powerful federal government as compared to that existing under the Articles of Confederation. Some called for scrapping the draft Constitution and simply enlarging the powers of the present federal government to make it more effective yet still modest.

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  • Constitution Sunday: James Wilson Replies to William Findley

    Constitution Sunday: James Wilson Replies to William Findley

    Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention.

    December 1, 1787

    James Wilson, one of the most eloquent and artful of his time, spoke at Pennsylvania’s Ratifying Convention on December 1, 1787 about the merits of the draft Constitution. One of the crucial components of the draft was its creation of the legislature as a “restrained” legislature; a legislature that would “give permanency, stability and security” to the new government.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Robert Whitehill at the Pennsylvania Convention

    Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention.

    November 30, 1787.

    At the Pennsylvania Convention, Robert Whitehill rose to speak about the proposed Constitution including—and perhaps especially—its biggest flaw. To Whitehill, despite the fact that the country’s learned people devised the Constitution, “the defect is in the system itself,—there lies the evil which. no argument can palliate, no sophistry can disguise.” The Constitution, as it was written, “must eventually annihilate the independent sovereignty of the several states” given the power that the Constitution allotted to the federal government.

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  • Constitution Sunday: James Wilson’s Opening Address

    Constitution Sunday: James Wilson’s Opening Address

    Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention. November 20 through December 15, 1787. James Wilson’s Opening Address.

    November 24, 1787

    At the convention in Pennsylvania called for ratifying the draft Constitution, one of the foremost students of history and articulate Americans of his time, James Wilson, delivered the opening address. Just as every great storyteller knows to do, he provided the context for the moment: whereas most governments are created as “the result of force, fraud, or accident,” America “now presents the first instance of a people assembled to weigh deliberately and calmly, and to decide leisurely and peacably, upon the form of government by which they will bind themselves and their posterity.” Past governments, whether that of the Swiss Cantons, the United Kingdom’s monarchy, the United Netherlands, or the ancients—the Achaean and Lycian leagues, the Greeks, the Romans—provided examples for the three forms of government: “Monarchical, Aristocratical, and Democratical.”

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  • Constitution Sunday: “Publius,” The Federalist XXXVII [James Madison]

    “Publius,” The Federalist XXXVII [James Madison]

    Daily Advertiser (New York), January 11, 1788

    In the course of human history, there have been innumerable types of governments—all of which serve as examples for those seeking to devise their own system of government. When the Constitutional Convention gathered, there was consensus that the Articles of Confederation would no longer suffice, but it remained unclear what direction the convention should go when drafting its Constitution. James Madison, writing under the name Publius, detailed the monumental task that the convention assigned itself.

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