ing money for the necessary maintenance of the general Government. In a word, in so far as a Government at all, it was in the main one of independent States, and in no sense that with which we are familiar, a Government of the entire people. Whatever existed of executive power was in a committee of the Congress; the only provision for meeting the expenses of the late war and the interest upon the public debt was by requisition upon the States, with no shadow of power for its enforcement.

Under the conditions briefly mentioned, with the United States of America a byword among the nations, the now historic Convention of 1787 assembled in Philadelphia, in the room where eleven years earlier had been promulgated the Declaration of Independence. It consisted of fifty-five members; and without a dissenting voice, Washington, a delegate from Virginia, was elected its President. Not the least of his public services was now to be rendered in the work of safeguarding the fruits of successful revolution by a stable Government. Chief among the associates with whom he was daily in earnest, anxious counsel in the great assemblage, were men whose names live with his in history. If Franklin, Wilson, Sherman, King, Randolph, Rutledge, Mason, Pinckney, Hamilton, Madison, and their associates had rendered no public service other than as builders of the Constitution, that alone would entitle them to the measureless gratitude of all future generations of their countrymen.

When they were assembled, the startling fact was at once apparent that, under the Confederation, with its constituent States at times in almost open hostility to one another, the country was gradually drifting into a condition of anarchy.

It is our glory to-day, and will be that of countless oncoming generations, that the men of '87 were equal to the stupendous emergency. Regardless of instructions, expressed or implied, the master spirits of the Convention, looking beyond local prejudices and State environment, and appealing to time for vindication, with a ken that now seems more than human, discerned the safety, the well-being, the glory of

their countrymen, bound up in a general Government of plenary powers, a Government "without a seam in its garment, to foreign nations."

To this end the proposition submitted by Paterson of New Jersey, in the early sittings of the Convention, for a mere enlargement of the powers of the Confederation, was decisively rejected. With the light that could be gleaned from the pages of Montesquieu, the suggestive lessons to be drawn from the fate of the short-lived republics whose wrecks lay along the pathway of history, and from the unwritten Constitution of the mother country, as their only guides, the leaders of the Convention were at once in the difficult role of constructive statesmen. The Herculean task to which with unwearied effort they now addressed themselves was that of "builders" of the Constitution; the establishers, for the ages, of the fundamental law for a free people.

One of the perils which early beset the Convention, and whose spectre haunted its deliberations till the close, was the hostility engendered by the dread and jealousy of the smaller toward the larger States. This fact will in some measure explain what in later years have been denominated the anomalies of the Constitution. To a correct understanding of the motives of the builders, and an appreciation of their marvellous accomplishment, it must not be forgotten that "the foundations of the Constitution were laid in compromise." The men of '87 had but recently emerged from the bloody conflict through which they had escaped the domination of kingly power. With the tyranny of George the Third yet burning in their memories, it is not to be wondered that the Revolutionary patriots of the less populous States were loath to surrender rights, deemed, by them, secure under their local governments; that they dreaded the establishment of what they apprehended might prove an overshadowing - possibly unlimited-central authority.

The creation of a general Government, with its three separate and measurably independent departments, happily concluded, with the delegated powers of each distinctly enumerated, the salient question as to the basis of representation

in the Congress at once pressed for determination. Upon the question of provision for a chief executive, and his investment with the powers necessarily incident to the great office, there was after much debate a practical consensus of opinion. And practical unanimity in the end prevailed regarding the judicial department, with its great court without a prototype at its creation, and even yet without a counterpart in foreign Governments.

The rock upon which the Convention barely escaped early dissolution, was the basis of representation in the Congress created under the great coördinate legislative department. The model for our Senate and House of Representatives was unquestionably the British Parliament. This statement is to be taken with weighty qualifications; for hereditary or ecclesiastical representation, as in the House of Lords, is wholly unknown in our system of government. The significant resemblance is that of our Lower House to the British Commons. In these respective chambers, the people, as such, have representation.

The earnest, at times violent, contention of the smaller States, in our historic Convention, was for equal representation in both branches of the proposed national legislature. This was strenuously resisted by the larger States under the powerful leadership of Madison of Virginia, and Wilson of Pennsylvania. Their equally earnest, and by no means illogical contention was for popular representation in each House, as outlined in the Virginia plan which had been taken as the framework of the proposed Constitution. The opposing views appeared wholly irreconcilable, and for a time the parting of the ways seemed to have been reached. Threats of dissolution were not uncommon in the Chamber, and for many days the spirit of despair brooded over the Convention. A delegate from Maryland vehemently declared: "The Convention is on the verge of dissolution, scarcely held together by the strength of a hair." Well has it been said: "In even the contemplation of the fearful consequence of such a calamity, the imagination stands aghast."

At the crucial moment mentioned, Sherman and Ellsworth presented upon behalf of Connecticut the first and most far-reaching of the great compromises of the Constitution. The Connecticut plan was in brief to the effect that in fixing the ratio of representation there should be recognition alike of the federal and of the national feature in government, in a word, that in the Lower House the national, and in the upper the federal principle should have full recognition. This was a departure from the Virginia plan to the extent that it in effect proposed the establishment of a federal republic, in the concrete, that the House should be composed of representatives chosen directly by the people from districts of equal population; while representation in the Senate should be that of the States, each, regardless of population, to have two members, to be chosen at stated periods by their respective legislatures.

After heated debate, this compromise was carried by a bare majority, and the provision for popular representation in the House, and equal State representation in the Senate, became engrafted upon our Federal Constitution. This feature, an eminent foreign writer has declared, "is the chief American contribution to the common treasures of political civilization." The eminent writer, De Tocqueville, has well said: "The principle of the independence of the States triumphed in the formation of the Senate, and that of the sovereignty of the nation in the composition of the House of Representatives."

The success of the Connecticut plan made possible that of other essential compromises which followed; and the result was, as the sublime consummation of wise deliberation and patriotic concession, the establishment of the Government of the United States.

It is the proud boast of the Briton, that "the British Constitution has no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned, and that the origin of English law is as undiscoverable as that of the Nile." Our Government, buttressed upon a written Constitution of enumerated and logically implied powers, had its historic beginning upon that master

ful day, April 30, 1789, when Washington took solemn oath of office as our first President.

The Senate of the United States has been truly declared "the greatest deliberative body known to men." By Constitutional provision it consists of two members from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for the term of six years. No person has the legal qualification for Senator "unless he shall have attained to the age of thirty years, be an inhabitant of the State for which he is chosen, and have been nine years a citizen of the United States." No State, without its consent, can ever be deprived, even by Constitutional amendment, of its equal representation in the Senate. Nevada with a population of less than forty thousand has her equal voice with New York with a population exceeding seven million. This anomaly was occasioned by concession by the larger to the smaller States in the Convention of 1787, a sion which made possible the establishment of the federal Union.

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One essential difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate is that to the latter "the previous question" is unknown; no method existing for terminating debate, other than by unanimous consent. Here, unlimited discussion and amendment can have their perfect work. Within the last three or four decades many fruitless attempts have been made to introduce a modified "previous question" or clôture, by which the Senate could be brought to an immediate vote. At first blush such change might seem desirable, but experience has demonstrated the wisdom of the method to which there has been such steady adherence. It secures time for consideration and full discussion upon every question. In the end the vote will be taken. Debate is rarely prolonged beyond reasonable limit. Not infrequently the public welfare is imperilled by too much, rather than too little, legislation. It was the belief of Jefferson that government should touch the citizen at the fewest possible points. The quaint lines of the old English poet have lost nothing of their significance: