Today’s session was surprisingly brief, undoubtedly to give delegates additional time to review the Constitution as reported by the Committee of Style and to confer with their colleagues. Nevertheless, several actions were taken.
George Mason had earlier “moved without success for a power to make sumptuary regulations,” laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly on food, clothing, drink, and household items. Although difficult to enforce, Mason believes such laws necessary. “After descanting on the extravagance of our manners, the excessive consumption of foreign superfluities, and the necessity of restricting it,” he began, “as well with economical and republican views,” he moved to form a committee to report Articles of Association for encouraging by advice and example “economic frugality and American manufactures.” Agreed to unanimously, a committee was appointed.
Only three other motions were considered today. Two failed and one passed, the latter replacing the word “servitude” with “service” in the section on representation in the House of Representatives, “the former being thought to express the condition of slaves, and the latter obligations of free persons.”
William Johnson, chairman of the Committee of Style, then made a further report, proposing two additional resolutions which were distributed but not discussed. The first proposes the process for ratification of the Constitution – that it “should be laid before the United States in Congress assembled, that it should afterwards be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification; and that each convention assenting and ratifying the same should give notice thereof to the United States in Congress assembled.”
The second resolution provides a process for the Constitution to go into effect upon the ratification of nine States, including electing the President and members of Congress.
In the meantime, Mason has already been making an itemized list of his objections to the entire plan, making detailed notes on his copy of the report distributed yesterday by the Committee on Style. They include more than a dozen specific deletions, additions, and amendments for various sections of the Constitution. For example, he would propose that “in the 1st clause of the 9th section of same Article strike out “ex post facto laws” – and after the words “obligation of” insert “previous.” These will surely be topics of debate when deliberations resume tomorrow.
Mason also wrote on the blank pages of his copy of the Committee’s draft a short treatise, Objections to this Constitution of Government, clearly laying out his doubts about the document. First, there is no declaration of rights. As he has frequently argued on previous days, “the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitution of the several States,” proves that declarations of rights in the States “are no security.” Respecting the House of Representatives, he argues, “there is not the substance but the shadow only of representation.” His objection on this point was lessened somewhat when it was proposed that each representative in the House should represent thirty thousand rather than forty thousand people.
Many of Mason’s objections focus on the Senate, which he believes has been given too much power. Collaboration with the executive, the Senators’ duration in office, being “a constantly existing body almost continually sitting,” and being “one complete branch of the legislature, will destroy any balance in the government and enable them to accomplish what usurpations they please upon the rights and liberties of the people.”
Nor does the judiciary fare well in Mason’s analysis. It will “absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several States,” and there is no guarantee of the security provided by the common law. The office of President fares even poorer. First, the President has no constitutional council, “a thing unknown in any safe and regular government.” Consequently, the President will be unsupported by proper information and advice, and “generally be directed by minions and favorites; or he will become a tool of the Senate.” The Vice President, “that unnecessary officer, who for want of other employment is made president of the Senate,” dangerously blends the executive and legislative powers, besides “always giving to one of the States an unnecessary and unjust pre-eminence over the others.” Moreover, the unrestrained presidential power to grant pardons for treason may actually “be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt.”
Mason’s cynicism extends to powers assigned to the national government at the expense of the States. Requiring only a majority vote for making commercial and navigation laws; the necessary and proper clause; absence of trials by jury in civil cases; no protection for freedom of the press; implied power to maintain a standing army; and restraining the States from laying export duties on their own produce, force Mason to conclude that “this government will set out a moderate aristocracy.” Furthermore, “it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in one or the other.” Finally, he opposes permitting the importation of slaves for the next twenty years. Such importations “render the United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of defense.”
Mason came to the Convention prepared, even anxious, to create a stronger union and national government, but is now prepared to oppose it. His objections will most assuredly have an important impact on the ratification process should the Constitution go forward.