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20 Doddridge in Rebuttal According to Hugh Blair Grigsby, a Norfolk delegate and first historian of the convention, its existence owed more to Philip Doddridge than to any other man living. From the far northwest county of Brooke, he was near sixty years of age, a lawyer, twice a delegate in the legislature, where he had in 1816helped to put the senate on a whit e basis, and currently the Congressman f rom his district. A fellow westerner wrote a vivid descr iption of him in 1829: “He has none of the bland and polished manner belonging to the South. He is a low thick broad shoulder’d uncouth looking man having an uncommonly large head & face with cheaks [sic] over-loaded with flesh. . . . He speaks in the broad Scotch-Irish dialect although he is an excellent sc holar & man of extensive and prof ound research .” This “Patrick Henry of the West” replied with some acerbit y to Abel P. Upshur and John W. Green, whose motion was on the floor. After first discussing the history of the reform movement and the declaration of rights, he proceeded to confront “old” Virginia with the challenge of “new” Virginia. . . . In our course we have not exactly followed in the footsteps of our predecessors who made the present Constitution. They acted as master builders : we have not. They laid the foundation first, and then proceeded to the superstructure. Af ter they had dec lared the Government of the King of England at an end, the first thing they did was to appoint a Committee to prepare and report a Declaration of Rights. For what purpose? To serve as a basis of Government. They first determined the powers they would surrender , and the powers they would retain, and they acted upon and passed From Proceedings, pp. 85–88. 296 The Virginia Convention the Declaration of Rights first,and then,and not until then,they proceeded to erect upon their dec lared principles, the Constitution. If it must be so called, they made the preface first, and then the book. In the course of his v ery eloquent argument, the gentleman f rom Northampton admitted, that it was the safest r ule that a major ity of the units of the community should govern, but only when property was equal. Unless property was equal he did not admit the principle at all. [Mr. Upshur rose to explain. He said the gentleman f rom Brooke had mistaken his meaning. He had not said that the r ule was only safe when the property of one individual was equal to that of another. He disclaimed, alike, the principle, and the effect that might be deduced f rom it. He applied the remark to large masses of population having not only unequal but discordant interests.] Mr. Doddr idge proceeded. I m ust have misunderstood the gentleman yesterday, but I did not misunderstand him to-day , and this, had he listened a little longer , he w ould have discovered. The gentleman f rom Northampton has laboured, and I am sure he thinks successfully, to maintain that, in Virginia the majority of free white persons have not the right (and he almost denies their pow er) to govern the State. This jus majoris, he says, is not derived to them, from the law of nature; (“that, with all its principles, is swept away,”) nor f rom the exigencies of societ y; nor f rom the nature and necessities of Government; nor yet from any Conventional source, which can only be by an express provision in the present Constitution . Argumenti gratia, let the gentleman be right, and for this purpose let it be conceded that the majority could only derive this right, if at all, from some one of those repudiated sources. His conclusion then is,that a majority of freemen in this f ree land are not possessed of the r ight or power to govern. But Government there must be, or we instantly sink into anarchy. Pray whence, then, will the gentleman derive the power in question to the minority? Surely he will not go back to the natural state,where force prevailed.That state of things “with all its pr inciples, was swept away,” when the present Government was formed. He cannot deduce this right from the exigencies of society; nor f rom the nature or necessities of Gov ernment; nor if not 1.For the sake of argument [Ed.]. [3.139.238.76] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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