Note 997 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Even Hamilton admitted this. "The framers of it [the Constitution] will have to encounter the disrepute of having brought about a revolution in government, without substituting anything that was worthy of the effort; they pulled down one Utopia, it will be said, to build up another." (Hamilton to Washington, Sept., 1788; Hamilton's Works: Lodge, ix, 444; and also in Jefferson, Writings: Ford, xi, footnote to 330.) Martin Van Buren describes the action of the Federal Convention that framed the Constitution, in "having ... set aside the instructions of Congress by making a new Constitution ... an heroic but lawless act." (Van Buren, 49-50.)
Professor Burgess does not overstate the case when he declares: "Had Julius or Napoleon committed these acts [of the Federal Convention in framing and submitting the Constitution], they would have been pronounced coups d'état." (Burgess, i, 105.)
Also see Beard: Econ. I. C., 217-18.