Annual Report (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: was agreed to, to meet tlie objection of the slave States.' The second limitation was suggested by Mr. Sherman, just before the close of the Convention, after the failure of his motion already referred to. It provided that "No State shall without its consent be affected in its internal police or deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.'12 This was opposed by Madison on the ground that its adoption would be but the signal for the application for special provisions from every State. The measure only received the support of the three small States represen ted in the Convention, namely Connecticut, New, 'ersey, and Delaware. Having failed to secure the guaranty he thought necessary, Mr. Sherman, determined to guard the interests of the small States, moved to strike out the entire article in regard to amendment, but this did not even command the support of all the small States. At this critical moment Gouverneur Morris moved to add the provision guaranteeing to each State its equal representation in the Senate. "This motion," says Madison in his notes, "being dictated by the circulating murmurs of the small States, was agreed to without debate or opposition."3 Such, in brief, is the history of the origin of the amending power as embodied in the Constitution of the United States. The results of the deliberations of the Convention appear in Article ? of the Constitution, which reads as follows: The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem H necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on tlio application of the legislatures of two-thirds of tho several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in cither rase, shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of throe...