Note 382 — Chapter VI

Mr. Madison has recorded the suspicions with which this resolution of the New York legislature was received. Their previous refusal of the impost act, and their known anti-federal tendencies, gave rise, he says, to the belief that their object was to obtain a convention without having it called under the authority of Congress, or else, by dividing the plans of the States in their appointments of delegates, to frustrate them all. (Madison. Elliot, V. 96.) But whatever grounds there might have been for either of these suspicions, the latter certainly was not well founded. The New York resolution was drafted by Hamilton, and although it was passed by a body in which a majority had not exhibited a disposition to enlarge the authority of Congress, it was manifestly not intended to prevent the adoption of the plan of a convention. It contemplated the passage by Congress of an act, recommending the States to institute a convention of representatives of the States to revise the Articles of Confederation; and the resolution introduced by the New York delegation into Congress proposed that the alterations and amendments which the convention might consider necessary to render the Articles of Confederation "adequate to the preservation and support of the Union," should be reported to Congress and to the States respectively, but did not direct how they should be adopted. This would have left open a great question, and seemed to be a departure from the mode in which the Articles of Confederation directed that amendments should be made. Probably it was Hamilton's intention to leave the form in which the new system should be adopted for future action, without fettering the movement by prescribing the mode before the convention had assembled. But this course was practically impossible. Congress could not be prevailed upon to recommend a convention, without making the condition that the new provisions should be reported to Congress and confirmed by the States. This gave rise to great embarrassment in the convention, when it came to be admitted that the Confederation must be totally superseded, and not amended; and it was finally disregarded. But it was the only mode in which the convention could have been recommended by Congress, and without that recommendation, probably, it could not have been instituted.