24 vocated.a supreme national or consolidated, the other, a federal form of government. The latter eventually triumphed. The friends of a supreme government, after being defeated in ajl their direct efforts, endeavored to accomplish their purpose by indirect means, as fully appears by the following extract from “ Taylor’s New Views of the Constitution August. 18. It was proposed to empower the legislature of the United States, (the word national is now dropt,) ‘io grant charters of incorporation in eases where the public good ‘ may require them, and the authority of a single State may be incompetent; to establish a. ‘ university ; to encourage, by proper premiums and provisions, the advancement' of useful ‘knowledge and discoveries; to establish seminaries for the promotion of literature and the ‘ arts and sciences; to grant charters of incorporation ; to establish institutions, rewards, and ‘ immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; and to regulate- ‘stages on the post-roads,’which, with other propositions, were referred to the committee of July 23d. September 14. ‘Question. To grant letters of incorporation for canals, et cetera; nega- ‘lived. To establish a university; negatived!’‘ Their rejection was a necessary consequence of substituting a federal for the national Government, zealously contended .for, from the 29th of May to'the 14th of September. It was obvious that powers to establish corporations, prescribe the mode of education, patronise local improvements, and bestow rewards and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, would certainly swallow up a federal, and introduce a national Government. When, therefore, a.federal system obtained the preference, it would have been inconsistent with the high degree of intelligence possessed by the members of the convention, to have permitted their determination to be defeated by these indirect attempts. This intelligence was assailed by the soothing but insidious restriction, that the powers to incorporate, grant exclusive privileges, and exercise every species of patronage, w’ere onlyto be exercised “ in cases where the public good may require it.” Tlie same soothing bitt insidious argument is now addressed to the intelligence of the‘public, to justify an exercise of the very powers which the intelligence of the convention withheld from a federal Government; and whether the promise of public good,has been fallacious or‘fulfilled by the monopolies of currency, of manufactures, and the extension of federal patronage, the public can decide. Yet, Whatever may have been their temporary effect, it is obvious that the enlightened framers of the constitution considered the condition of public good, as an enlargement and not a restriction of power; and that it would defeat all the limitations of the constitution, by which a federal Government could be formed or sustained. It was a pretext wdiich would fit every encroachment or usurpation; and no' powers could be more indefinite and sovereign than those of granting exclusive privileges, bestowing rewards and immunities upon the three comptehen- sive interests of society, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, and patronising capitalists; paupers, knowledge, and ignorance. Such a nest of powers, though exhibited as sleepingin the bed o f public good, bore so strong a resemblance to the old bed of justice in Fiance, which was the repository of evil as well as good, that they were all rejected. It was evident that they would Le sufficient to re-hatch the strangled national form of government; and the convention having finally preferred the federal form, thought that no good to the public could result from such powers, which would recompense it for the evils it would sustain from the subversion ol that form. The convention saw, that if Congress could exercise such powers, for the public good, it might, upon the same ground, usurp any powers whatsoever, and in rejecting the propositions, decided between investing that body with a general or limited federal authority. Hence the power to regulate commerce was not intended to revive the iejected propositions to empower Congress to bestow rewards upon agriculture, commerce, and manufactures. Hence the rejected proposition, to empower Congress to direct the exercise of the judicial power, cannot enable it to extend the jurisdiction of the supreme court. And for the same reason, a power to make war, cannot revive the rejected power to make canals, or to perforin any of those et ceteras, whatever they were, referred to by the journal. If these swet ping and indefinite sovereign powers, or all powers thought by those who exercise them to be necessary for he public good, with an et cetera besides, though proposed and rejected, do yet pass to Congress under the constitution ; then the battle between the national and federal parties in the con venion, terminated quite contrary to the usual course of things; the vanquished were victorious, and the victorious were vanquished : and if they were now alive, one party would be as much surprised to discover, that it had carried the consolidating propositions which it had lost, as the other, that it had lost the federal principles which it carried. The spectacle of the slain rising up alive, and the living falling down dead, could not have been expected by either. No powers can be more sovereign and arbitrary, than those of deciding and doing whatever may administer to the public good, and of pilfering private property by privileges, partialities, premiums, monopolies, rewards, and immun ties; nor more capable of reaching any end. Had the rejection of such powers been unnecessary for the security of a federal form of Government^ the convention might have still been justifiable for the act, as deeming them tyrannical, fraudulent, and oppressive. Fid the convention reject them in fad, and replant
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