Excerpt from The Constitutional Convention: Its History, Powers, and Modes of Proceeding
It is my purpose, in the following pages, to inquire into the history, powers, and modes of proceeding of the Constitutional Convention, one of the most important and most characteristic of the political institutions of the United States.
Of the American system of government, the two leading principles are, first, that laws and Constitutions can be rightfully formed and established only by the people over whom they are to be put in force; and, secondly, that the people being a corporate unit, comprising all the citizens of the state, and, therefore, too unwieldy to do this important work directly, agents or representatives must be employed to do it, and that, in such numbers, so selected, and charged respectively with such functions, as to make it reasonably certain that the will of the people will be not only adequately but speedily executed.
The function of framing and enacting the statute law is commonly, by the practice of all representative governments, interested to a numerous body, called a legislature. Constitutions, on the other hand, considered as written instruments, are the work of various agencies, according to the genius or special circumstances of the states concerned, some being formed by the executive branch of the government, some by the legislature, and some by a body for that purpose specially chosen and commissioned. Thus, in England, this duty is exclusively committed to King, Lords, and Commons in Parliament assembled. Under the imperial regimes of the first and the third Napoleons, in France, the plebiscites, determining the form and powers of the government, though nominally the work of the Senate, were and are really dictated by those monarchs.
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