to the law, he is to lose them, and pay a heavy fine. This is the form in which the bill was agreed to by a large majority in the House of Delegates. It is a child of Mr. Henry, and said to be a favorite one. They first voted, by a majority of thirty, that all legal obstructions to the treaty of peace, should cease in Virginia as soon as laws complying with it should have passed in all the other States. This was the result of four days' debate, with the most violent opposition from Mr. Henry. A few days afterward he renewed his efforts, and got a vote, by a majority of fifty, that Virginia would not comply until Great Britain shall have complied.

The States seem to be either wholly omitting to provide for the Federal Treasury; or to be withdrawing the scanty appropriations made to it. The latter course has been taken by Massachusetts, Virginia, and Delaware. The Treasury Board seems to be in despair of maintaining the shadow of government much longer. Without money, the offices must be shut up, and the handful of troops on the frontier disbanded, which will probably bring on an Indian war, and make an impression to our disadvantage on the British garrisons within our limits.15

DEAR SIR,

TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.

New York, December 20, 1787.

I was favored on Saturday with your letter of the seventh instant, along with which was covered the printed letter of Colonel R. H. Lee to the Governor.

It does not appear to me to be a very formidable attack on the new Constitution; unless it should derive an influence from the names of the correspondents, which its intrinsic merits do not entitle it to. He is certainly not perfectly accurate in the statement of all his facts; and I should infer from the tenor of the objections in Virginia that his plan of an Executive would hardly be viewed as an amendment of that of the Convention. It is a little singular that three of the most distinguished advocates for amendments; and who expect to unite the thirteen States in their project, appear to be pointedly at variance with each other on one of the capital articles of the system. Colonel Lee proposes, that the President should choose a Council of eleven, and with their advice have the appointment of all offiColonel Mason's proposition is, that a Council of six should be appointed by the Congress. What degree of power he would confide to it, I do not know. The idea of the Governor is, that there should be a plurality of co-equal heads, distinguished probably by other peculiarities in the organization. It is pretty certain that some others who make a common cause with them in the general attempt to bring about alterations, differ still more from them than they do from each other; and that they themselves differ as much on some other great points, as on the constitution of the Executive.

cers.

You did not judge amiss of Mr. Jay. The paragraph affirming a change in his opinion of the plan of the Convention, was an arrant forgery. He has contradicted it in a letter to Mr. J. Vaughan which has been printed in the Philadelphia gazettes.

Tricks of this sort are not uncommon with the enemies of the new Constitution. Colonel Mason's objections were, as I am told, published in Boston, mutilated of that which pointed at the regulation of commerce. Doctor Franklin's concluding speech, which you will meet with in one of the papers herewith enclosed, is both mutilated and adulterated, so as to change both the form and spirit of it.

I am extremely obliged by the notice you take of my request concerning the Potomac. I must insist that you will not consider it as an object of any further attention.

The Philadelphia papers will have informed you of the result of the Convention of that State. New Jersey is now in Convention, and has probably by this time adopted the Constitution. General Irvine, of the Pennsylvania Delegation, who is just arrived here, and who conversed with some of the members at Trenton, tells me that great unanimity reigns in the Convention.

Connecticut, it is pretty certain, will decide also in the affirmative by a large majority. So, it is presumed, will New Hampshire; though her Convention will be a little later than could be wished. There are not enough of the returns in Massachusetts known for a final judgment of the probable event in that State. As far as the returns are known, they are extremely favorable: but as they are chiefly from the maritime parts of the State, they are a precarious index of the public sentiment. I have good reason to believe that if you are in correspondence with any gentleman in that quarter, and a proper occasion should offer for an explicit com

munication of your good wishes for the plan, so as barely to warrant an explicit assertion of the fact, that it would be attended with valuable effects. I barely drop the idea. The circumstances on which the propriety of it depends are best known to you, as they will be best judged of by yourself. The information from North Carolina gave me great pleasure. We have nothing from the States south of it.

152

DEAR SIR,

TO EDMUND RANDOLPH.

New York, January 10, 1788.

I received two days ago your favor of December twenty seventh, enclosing a copy of your letter to the Assembly. I have read it with attention, and I can add with pleasure, because the spirit of it does as much honor to your candor, as the general reasoning does to your abilities. Nor can I believe that in this quarter the opponents of the Constitution will find encouragement in it. You are already aware that your objections are not viewed in the same decisive light by me that they are by you. I must own that I differ still more from your opinion, that a prosecution of the experiment of a second Convention will be favorable, even in Virginia, to the object which I am sure you have at heart. It is to me apparent that, had your duty led you to throw your influence into the opposite scale, it would have given it a decided and unalterable preponderance; and that Mr. Henry would either have suppressed

his enmity, or been baffled in the policy which it has dictated. It appears also that the grounds taken by the opponents in different quarters forbid any hope of concord among them. Nothing can be further from your views than the principles of different sets of men who have carried on their opposition under the respectability of your name. In this State the party adverse to the Constitution notoriously meditate either a dissolution of the Union, or protracting it by patching up the Articles of Confederation. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the opposition proceeds from that part of the people who have a repugnance in general to good government, or to any substantial abridgement of State powers, and a part of whom in Massachusetts are known to aim at confusion, and are suspected of wishing a reversal of the Revolution. The minority in Pennsylvania, as far as they are governed by any other views than an habitual opposition to their rivals, are manifestly averse to some essential ingredients in a National Government. You are better acquainted with Mr. Henry's politics than I can be, but I have for some time considered him as no further concurring in the plan of amendments than as he hopes to render it subservient to his real designs. Viewing the matter in this light, the inference with me is unavoidable that were a second trial to be made, the friends of a good constitution for the Union would not only find themselves not a little differing from each other as to the proper amendments; but perplexed and frustrated by men who had objects totally different. A second Convention would, of course, be formed under the