either with respect to the general government or the state governments. One or other, it has been surmised, must absorb the whole.120
Col. MASON did not expect this point would have been reagitated. The essential differences between the two plans had been clearly stated. The principal objections against that of Mr. Randolph were, the want of power, and the want of practicability. There can be no weight in the first, as the fiat is not to be here, but in the people He thought with his colleague (Mr. Randolph) that there were, be sides, certain crises, in which all the ordinary cautions yielded to public necessity. He gave, as an example, the eventual treaty with Great Britain, in forming which the commissioners of the United States had boldly disregarded the improvident shackles of Congress; had given to their country an honorable and happy peace; and, instead of being censured for the transgression of their powers, had raised to themselves a monument more durable than brass. The impracticability of gaining the public concurrence, he thought, was still more groundless. Mr. Lansing had cited the attempts of Congress to gain an enlargement of their powers, and had inferred, from the miscarriage of these attempts, the hopelessness of the plan which he (Mr. Lansing) opposed. He thought a very different inference ought to have been drawn, viz., that the plan which Mr. Lansing espoused, and which proposed to augment the powers of Congress, never could be expected to succeed. He meant not to throw any reflections on Congress as a body, much less on any particular members of it. He meant, however, to speak his sentiments without reserve on this subject; it was a privilege of age, and perhaps the only compensation which nature had given for the privation of so many other enjoyments; and he should not scruple to exercise it freely. Is it to be thought that the people of America, so watchful over their interests, so jealous of their liberties, will give up their all, will surrender both the sword and the purse, to the same body, — and that, too, not chosen immediately by themselves? They never will. They never ought. Will they trust such a body with the regulation of their trade, with the regulation of their taxes, with all the other great powers which are in contemplation? Will they give unbounded confidence to a secret journal,—to the intrigues, to the factions, which in the nature of things appertain to such an assembly? If any man doubts the existence of these characters of Congress, let him consult their Journals for the years '78, '79, and '80. It will be said, that, if the people are averse to parting with power, why is it hoped that they will part with it to a national legislature? The proper answer is, that in this case they do not part with power: they only transfer it from one set of immediate representatives to another set. Much has been said of the unsettled state of the mind of the people. He believed the mind of the people of America, as elsewhere, was unsettled as to some points, but settled as to others. In two points he was sure it was well settled,—first, in an attachment
