ey who framed it escaped by their work, were as
nothing to those which it entailed upon their descendants.

Two parties went into the convention. On one point, of course, they were
agreed, else they would never have come together at all,--that a united
government under the Articles of Confederation was a failure, and,
unless some remedy should be speedily devised, States with common local
interests would gravitate into separate and perhaps antagonistic
nationalities. But the differences between these two parties were
radical, and for a time seemed insurmountable. One proposed simply to
repair the Articles of Confederation as they might overhaul a machine
that was out of gear; the other proposed to form an altogether new
Constitution. One wanted a merely federal government; not, however,
meaning by that term what the other party--soon, nevertheless, to be
known as Federalists--were striving for, but a confederation of States,
each independent of all the rest and supreme in its own right, while
consenting to unite with the rest in a limited government for the
administration of certain common interests.[10]

This idea of the independence of the States was a survival of the old
colonial system, when each colony under its distinct relation to the
crown had attained a growth of its own with its separate interests. Each
of these colonies had become a State. The Revolution had secured to
each, it was maintained, a separate independence, achieved, it was true,
by united efforts, but not therefore binding them together as a single
nation. It was held as a legitimate result of that doctrine that each
State, not the people of the State, whether many or few, should be
represented by the same number of votes in a federal government as they
were under the Articles of Confederation, because such a government was
a union of States, not of a people.

All men, it was argued,--going back to a state of nature,--are equally
free and independent; and when a government is formed every man has an
equal share by natural right in its formation and in its subsequent
conduct. While numbers are few, every member of the State exercises his
individual right in person, and none can rightfully do more than this,
however wise, or powerful, or rich he may be. But when government by the
whole body of the people becomes cumbersome and inconvenient through
increase of numbers, the individual citizen loses none of his rights by
intrusting their exercise to