gentlemen, who had expressed their doubts whether some explanation of certain clauses in the Constitution, and some additional reflections on Congress, similar to those proposed by his excellency, were not necessary. But, he said, as the propositions were incorporated with the great and important question, whether this Convention will adopt and ratify the Constitution, he conceived himself in order, and would, with the permission of the Convention, make a few general observations upon the subject, which were as follows:—
It was an answer of Solon's, when he was asked what kind of a constitution he had constructed for the Athenians, that he had prepared as good a constitution of government as the people would bear; clearly intimating that a constitution of government should be relative to the habits, manners, and genius of the people intended to be governed by it. As the particular state governments are relative to the manners and genius of the inhabitants of each state, so ought the general government to be an assemblage of the principles of all the governments; for, without this assemblage of the principles, the general government will not sufficiently apply to the genius of the people confederated; and, therefore, by its meeting, in its operation, with a continual opposition, through this circumstance it must necessarily fail in its execution; because, agreeably to the idea of Solon, the people would not bear it. It may not, therefore, be improper to examine whether the federal Constitution proposed has a likeness to the different state constitutions, and such alone as to give the spirit and features of the particular governments; for Baron Montesquieu observes, that all governments ought to be relative to their particular principles, and that "a confederative government ought to be composed of states of the same nature, especially of the republican kind;" and instances that, as "the spirit of monarchy is war and enlargement of dominion, peace and moderation are the spirit of a republic." These two kinds of government cannot naturally subsist in a confederate republic.
From hence it follows that all the governments of the states in the Union ought to be of the same nature—of the republican kind; and that the general government ought to be an assemblage of the spirit an^ principles of them all
