Politically Incorrect Guide To The Constitution (Politically Incorrect Guides) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Plan was the outline of a national government. It would
have substituted a central government with all the power national officials could want for the federal government of the Confederation. This
was a type of government to which the people were known to be aversewhich explains why the Philadelphia Convention operated in secret, and
why its minutes, like James Madison's famous notes, were kept secret for
decades after the event.
    Fortunately for us, there were delegates to the Convention who kept
notes of what was said up to the point of their departure. Most notable are those of New York delegate Robert Yates, one-time chief justice of the
Empire State. He tells us that Virginia's governor, Edmund Randolph,
explained the Virginia proposals' rationale with three resolutions:

    1. Resolved, That a union of the States merely federal, will not
accomplish the objects proposed by the articles of the confederation, namely, common defence, security of liberty, and general welfare. 2. Resolved, That no treaty or treaties among any
of the States as sovereign, will accomplish or secure their common defence, liberty, or welfare. 3. Resolved, That a national
government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme
judicial, legislative, and executive.
    As Yates explains matters, another delegate objected at that point that
the goal of the Convention was to propose amendments to the Confederation, not to create a national government. If it adopted the first two resolutions, then, the Convention would be at an end. When asked what the
third resolution meant by the word "supreme," the answer was that the
states should yield when they conflicted with the federal government.
Six states voted for that resolution, which was thus temporarily adopted.
Over the following days, the Convention adopted resolutions about a
"national" legislature and a "national" executive. The limit of the Convention's nationalism in its early days was reached when James Wilson
of Pennsylvania proposed multi-state districts for the Senate and the Convention rejected his proposal.
Monarchists and nationalists and federalists-oh my!
    It may be useful to note at this point that there were three parties in the
Convention. The first was a monarchist party, the chief exemplar of
which was New York's Alexander Hamilton. The monarchists were intent
on wiping the states from the map and substituting one unitary govern ment for the entire continent. In the Convention, Hamilton made a
famous speech in which he avowed his admiration for the British constitution and said that while the American people were not prepared to
assimilate their government to the British model so closely as he could
wish, he owed it to himself to speak frankly. He called for a president
with a life term, senators with life terms, and appointment of governors
by the president-all in the manner of Great Britain. Hamilton here displayed two of his outstanding characteristics: candor and intellectual
brilliance. Many delegates, we are told, thought very highly of Hamilton's
learned disquisition, although none joined him in his characteristic nearsuicidal frankness.

    Portrait of a Patriot

    George Mason (1725-1792) was one of the towering figures in American constitutional history. His Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the first American bill
of rights, provided a template-and in many cases language-for the other
states', the federal, the French, the UN, and numerous other bills of rights. Mason played an
extremely significant role in the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution, including
helping to defeat efforts to draft a national-in lieu of a federal-constitution and insisting that the
assent of nine states be required for ratification. He also proposed that the House of Representatives
initiate all money bills, that Congress be able to ban slave importation, that export taxes be banned,
that lawmakers not be able to hop into plush positions in other