James Wilson’s opening speech to the Pennsylvania ratification convention was more than the opening defense of the work of the Constitutional Convention; it was an appeal to something greater. “Governments, in general,” he noted, “have been the result of force, of fraud, and accident.” For the first time in recorded history, “the United States exhibit to the world the first instance, as far as we can learn, of a nation assembling voluntarily, deliberating fully, and deciding calmly, concerning that system of government under which they would wish that they and their posterity should live.”
“That system of government” embodied in the proposed Constitution is different than the one that preceded it. The government under the Articles of Confederation was flawed, unable to adequately address either internal or external threats to the stability of the union. A convention had been called, Wilson continued, “to frame, for the consideration of their constituents, one federal and nation constitution – a constitution that would produce the advantages of good, and prevent the inconveniences of bad government…a constitution that would secure peace, freedom, and happiness to the states and people of America.”
This “gentle, peaceful, voluntary, and deliberate transition from one constitution of government to another” which “American now exhibits to the world,” Wilson posited, “is hitherto unparalleled.” In other parts of the world, such revolutionary changes in government “are connected with the idea of wars, and all the calamities attendant on wars.” But the transition from one constitution to another in the United States is not only peaceful and deliberate, but is founded on the will of the “the people.”
Wilson drew a comparison between the British constitution under which the former colonies had been governed, and the principles underlying the proposed Constitution for the United States. Observing the necessity “in every government, a power from which there is not appeal and may be termed supreme, absolute and uncontrollable,” he noted that in Britain, “the power is lodged in the British Parliament,” the legislative body. In fact, “the British constitution is just what the British Parliament pleases.” The United States had improved the “science and practice of government” by controlling “the power and conduct of the legislature by an overruling constitution.”
However, Wilson continued, the idea of vesting supreme power in a constitution is “an opinion that approaches a step nearer to the truth but does not reach it. The truth is, that in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power remains in the people. As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures, so the people are superior to our constitutions…The consequence is that the people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please.” This is the uniqueness of the Constitution.
Such lofty sentiments and appeals to sovereignty of the people had little impact on John Smilie, William Findley, Robert Whitehill, and other Anti-federalist members of the ratifying convention. In direct response to Wilson, Smilie shot back. “”When it is declared that ‘We the people of the United States do ordain and establish this Constitution,’ is not the very foundation a proof of a consolidated government by the manifest subversion of the principle that constitutes a union of states, which are sovereign and independent except in the specific objects of confederation?” It is reasonable, he claimed, to assume that “it was in the contemplation of the framers of this system to absorb and abolish the several states.” Founding the new government upon “the original authority of the people and not an association of states” is proof of the matter,” he insisted.
Debate in the Pennsylvania ratification convention and carried on in newspapers by advocates on both sides of the issue continued until mid-December. However, the records of the convention itself are scattered, incomplete, and often inconsistent. The record is even more opaque because the convention defeated Whitehill’s motion to permit delegates to enter on the Journal their reasons for voting to ratify or reject the Constitution.
An application from Thomas Lloyd to be made assistant clerk of the convention was read but postponed. Nevertheless, Lloyd, a London-born teacher and stenographer, utilized his skills in shorthand to record and publish the convention debates. However, his pro-Constitution position was well-known. Although he recorded speeches offered by both sides, when he published his Debates of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania in February 1788, the only speeches included were those by pro-Constitution James Wilson and Thomas McKean. Rumors circulated that he had taken bribes to present only one side, but his reputation was sufficiently intact that under the new Constitution he would be appointed as the official recorder of the second session of the House of Representatives. His notes were considered to be extremely accurate.
Later called “the Father of American Shorthand,” Lloyd returned to England in 1791 to visit family, but due to his agent’s failure to carry out a publishing agreement he was thrown into debtor’s prison. After criticizing the prison in his diary, Lloyd was convicted for libel against the British government. Finally freed in 1796, he returned to the United States to teach and publish his own account of his shorthand. However, publishing controversies related to Pennsylvania’s ratifying convention did not end with Lloyd.
Jamaican-born attorney Alexander James Dallas was editor of the Pennsylvania Herald, founded by Mathew Carey only two years before the convention. Dallas faithfully printed both sides of the debates until late November after nearly one hundred Federalists cancelled their subscriptions, resulting in Dallas’s dismissal as editor in February 1788. Unlike Lloyd, Dallas’s career soared. He became the first reporter of the new Supreme Court, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Secretary of the US Treasury, and acting Secretary of War and State under President James Madison. His son, George Mifflin Dallas would become a diplomat and Vice President under James K. Polk in March 1845.