But Mr. Conway has uncovered a document of far higher interest," the draught of a national constitution by Edmund Randolph, "saved from the flames at the close of the Convention and preserved among the inherited papers of George Mason's descendants. It is a precious discovery, a paper covering nine folio pages in Randolph's small handwriting, "evidently used," says Mr. Conway, "in committee of detail, each item being ticketed off when disposed of." It is filled with numerous erasures and interpolations, with notes by John Rutledge. In the vivid words of our author, "Randolph's alterations of his draft, suggesting consultations with one and another leader, the compulsory modifications, the Rutledge notes, make this old document in some sort a composite constitution." (p.73) What was only less important than Randolph's draft, a MS. paper by George Mason was found, advocating a plural executive-one of Randolph's favorite notions. Space will not here permit any effort to present the contents of this remarkable Randolph draft; but it adds much to our knowledge of the extent of Randolph's services in working out into details the broad system which he presented to the Convention at its opening. This document ought in some form to be known in full and to be made accessible to all students.

Of the soundness of Randolph's objections to the Constitution there may well be more than one opinion. One thing seems quite clear; Randolph, Virginia slaveholder that he was, proposed and favored no concessions or safeguards to slavery. His resolutions in the Convention hinted at none; and his draft, as given in this volume, contained simply a restriction on the States from preventing immigration, which would have secured no privilege of slave-trading. Whoever, consciously or unconsciously, would have delimited the place and power of slavery in the original Constitution, and thus opened the possibility of its gradual deseutude and peaceful extinction, has surely a claim to prescience and gratitude, superior to those who placed slavery behind the defences of the organic law of a Republic "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal;" unless, indeed, conceding the utter impossibility of forming the Union and the Constitution in 1789 except through the slavery compromises, we hold it the part of true statesmanship

then, as later in the Missouri compromise, to create the Union and establish its government, waiting for that stage of its growth and consolidation,-which came in 1861,-which should make certain the triumph of "Liberty and Union." If human progress takes no account of cost, if blood and treasure are not weighed, in the scales of historical Providence, against the great results to which our rational world seems to move, it may be that the slavery compromises of the Constitution are defensible. It is a question of mingled casuistry and statesmanship not too easily answered. Mr. Conway observes,-"It is melancholy to reflect that the Convention disregarded Randolph's efforts to make the relative State and Federal powers definite and unmistakable. The clause he would have added in ink has since been written in blood." (p. 92.)

On October 10, 1787, Randolph addressed a long letter* to the House of Delegates of Virginia in explanation of his course in the Convention and especially of his refusal to sign the Constitution. It is a fine example of the tone and bearing which becomes a public servant. In point of diction it surpasses perhaps any other of Randolph's published productions, and is marked throughout by dignity of tone, elevated sentiment, perfect temper, and remarkable felicity of expression. In it Randolph paints with graphic pen the defects of the Confederacy and the dangerous imbecility into which the government has lapsed, though he confessed he had not regarded it as so defective when he entered the Convention. He stigmatizes its powers as "dependent on supplication alone." With lofty spirit he describes himself as "affecting no indifference to public opinion but resolved not to court it by unmanly sacrifice of my own judgment." He declares the Confederacy must be "thrown aside," and setting forth the needs of the government which shall supplant it, he says:

"To mark the kind and degree of authority which ought to be confided to the government of the United States is no more than to reverse the description which I have already given of the defects of the Confederacy;"... "new powers must be deposited in a new body, growing out of a consolidation of the States, as far as the circumstances of the States will allow."

* 1 Elliot's Debates, 482.

Denouncing the idea of "partial Confederacies,"-Confedercies composed of a part of the States, and especially a Virginia or Southern Confederacy, he exclaims,-"I am fatigued with summoning up to my imagination the miseries which will harass the United States, if torn from each other and which will not end till they are superseded by fresh mischiefs under the yoke of a tyrant."

He urges again the reference of the Constitution to the States for amendments and the calling of a second Convention, disapproves the equality of the States in the Senate, the reëligibility of the President, and dwells long on the uncertain lines between the powers of Congress and of the States, pointing out the danger of the one being "swallowed up by the other, under cover of general words and implication."

The Virginia Convention met at Richmond June 2, 1788, to pass upon the proposed Constitution. It was a body of unsurpassed fitness and authority for its task. In it sat Randolph, Madison, George Mason, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Munroe, associated with scores, literally, of other names of wide fame. Randolph, in his first speeeh in the Convention, explained his refusal to subscribe the Constitution and disclosed his present attitude.

"I came hither," he said, "regardless of allurements, to continue as I have begun; to repeat my objections to the Constitution; and to concur in any practicable scheme of amendments; but I never will assent to any scheme that will operate a dissolution of the Union or any means which may lead to it."

It was evident that his view of present duty had been not a little modified since his letter of the preceding year.

"When I withheld my subscription," he finely said, "I had not even the glimpse of the genius of America, relative to the principles of the new Constitution."

He steadily combatted the opposition of Henry and showed none of the inflexible, almost unreasoning, antipathy of George Mason to the new constitution. On nearly all important questions, he stood with Madison and Marshall. Twenty amendments were recommended by the convention, but on the question of making the ratification conditional upon the adoption of amendments, Randolph firmly took the side of

the friends of the Constitution, and was the author of the form of ratification finally adopted-an exquisite specimen of precision of expression and of solemn patriotic sentiment.

Randolph's course at this point, while open to easy misconstruction, was not only characteristic but consistent. He was never a doctrinaire; he had the just tractableness of the statesman. Persuaded that the proposed constitution was the best attainable, he resolved to vote for its ratification, without conditions, and afterward to secure, if possible, the amendments he deemed important. His deep, unwavering republicanism and patriotism in this action, are amply and vividly shown in Mr. Conway's Xth, XIth and XIIth Chapterschapters which to the student of our constitutional history are of prime interest.

The remaining chapters of this volume relate more exclusively to the personal career and fortunes of Randolph under the new government. He became the first Attorney General. In his XVIIIth Chapter, Mr. Conway presents Randolph's attitude on the delicate and still moot topic of "State amenability" to suits in the courts of the United States. The leading and historic case of Chisholm, ex'r. v. Georgia (2 Dallas, 419), was powerfully argued by Randolph as Attorney General in support of the plaintiff in error, but the decision he won was met by the XIth amendment. "The temptation," says Mr. Conway, " to invest with patriotic pride a disinclination to pay debts was strong. Sovereignty, trembling at once with dignity and terror, hastened to answer the Supreme Court with the XIth amendment" (p. 173). Mr. Conway offers in the remainder of this chapter a spirited and somewhat indignant, layman's view of this question of constitutional law.

With his XXth Chapter, the history of Randolph's political relations in the cabinet of Washington begins. In the prolonged contest between Hamilton and Jefferson, Randolph did not escape criticism from each of the combatants. He alludes. to this and gives a faithful glimpse of his own temper, in a letter to Washington, April 19, 1794.

"I know it, that my opinion, not containing a systematic adherence to party; but arising solely from my views of right, falls sometimes on

one side and sometimes on the other; and the momentary satisfaction produced by an occasional coincidence of sentiment does not prevent each class from occasionally charging me with inconsistency."

On which Mr. Conway tersely comments: "Randolph's admission, at its worst, would merely show him an early 'Mugwump'!"

In 1794, Randolph succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of State in Washington's cabinet. We cannot here follow the endless, bewildering complications of our domestic politics growing out of the war between England and France, which so embittered this period, nor the equally endless feuds of Hamilton and Jefferson and their adherents. Yet no one who has followed Randolph to this point can resist the intense personal interest which his remaining career excites.

The story of Randolph's overthrow cannot be easily or briefly told. Mr. Conway has taken for it no less than 160 pages-nearly two-fifths of his volume. It is only possible here to say that a long dispatch of Fauchet, French minister at Washington, to his home government, dated October 31, 1794, was picked up at sea, March 28, 1795, having been thrown overboard from a French corvette pursued by a British cruiser. A copy of this dispatch was sent from London to the British minister at Washington and came into the hands of Col. Pickering, Secretary of War, and by him was made known to Washington.

If this incident is not intrinsically of high importance, its elucidation is perhaps the most painstaking and difficult of Mr. Conway's tasks. To the personal reputation of Randolph it is of first importance and his biographer has spared no labor or research to set it in its true relations. The story deals with so many details, and has so many ramifications and intricacies, that few will probably be qualified to pass judgment except as the result of a general impression of the matter as a whole. When it is considered, however, that the charges, so-called, against Randolph contained in this dispatch, rested wholly on the unsupported statements of Fauchet, a low-toned, gasconading agent of France under Robespierre, it is impossible not to feel that the effect produced on all the actors, in the little drama, including Washington, was quite unwarranted.