On the morning of May 30th, General Washington stepped down from his chair, and the Convention began its deliberation in Committee of the Whole – at liberty to debate measures and even to vote without binding themselves to any particular proposal.
The Committee of the Whole House was an ancient device, invented long ago in England to give Commons the freedom of debate under an autocratic ruler. Votes were not recorded but counted only as a test, a trial of opinion, a way of taking the pulse of the meeting. Back in the 1600s, Queen Elizabeth’s royal councilors had not liked this invention at all; it gave plain men – merchants, lawyers, squires – the freedom to discuss affairs of state which properly were the concern of noblemen and princes. It was a point of view which was to die hard. As late as the American Revolution, Lord George Germain had remarked testily that he “would not have men of a mercantile cast every day collecting themselves together and debating about political matters.”
Yet by the time of the Convention in Philadelphia, “men of a mercantile cast” led the country, and on May 30th, the debate in the Convention opened with Edmund Randolph suggesting an amended version of his first three resolves. A union of the states “merely federal,” said Randolph, would not accomplish the object for which they had met. He therefore proposed “a national government, consisting of a supreme legislature, executive, and judicial.”
There followed a total and ominous silence. A government of three separate parts was certainly acceptable; in fact, six of the new states’ constitutions already specified such separation of power. But a national government, a supreme national government? The small-state men seemed stunned by these words. There must have been much shifting of chairs, a restless movement in the room. George Wythe of Virginia was quick to seize the opportunity. “From the silence of the House,” he said, “I presume that gentlemen are prepared to pass on the resolution?”
It was a shrewd move, but it failed. The House was not prepared to do so. Pierce Butler of South Carolina requested that Mr. Randolph show that a national government was necessary for the continuation of the states. And several of the members argued that Mr. Randolph’s resolutions would destroy the Confederation, which this Convention had no right to do.
It was on these words – federal, national, supreme – that the Convention would be stuck for days to come. Did the delegates intend to overthrow the state governments? Governeur Morris tried to explain the terms: a federal government, he said, was a mere compact, resting on the good faith of the parties; a national government, on the other hand, had “a complete and compulsive operation.” In the ensuing years the term federal would reverse its meaning, but when Randolph declared that “a Union merely federal will not accomplish the objects proposed,” he defined the word as the Convention was to use it. A federal government, Madison told the delegates, operates on states, a national government directly on individuals. It was a difficult concept for the Convention, this idea of an American nation, an American government, of citizens who owed their allegiance first of all to the United States – all this in a country where state loyalty had been the American loyalty from the very beginning.
