Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/578

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DEBATES.
[Grayson.

produce a witness? Will he incur a great deal of expense; from a dependence on such a chance? Those who know human nature, black as it is, must know that mankind are too well attached to their interest to run such a risk. I conceive that this power is absolutely necessary, and not dangerous; that, should it be attended by little inconveniences, they will be altered, and that they can have no interest in not altering them. Is there any real danger? When I compare it to the exercise of the same power in the government of Virginia, I am persuaded there is not. The federal government has no other motive, and has every reason for doing right which the members of our state legislature have. Will a man on the eastern shore be sent to be tried in Kentucky, or a man from Kentucky be brought to the eastern shore to have his trial? A government, by doing this, would destroy itself. I am convinced the trial by jury will be regulated in the manner most advantageous to the community.

Gov. RANDOLPH declared that the faults which he once saw in this system he still perceived. It was his purpose, he said, to inform the committee in what his objections to this part consisted. He confessed some of the objections against the judiciary were merely chimerical; but some of them were real, which his intention of voting in favor of adoption would not prevent him from developing.

Saturday, June 21, 1788.

Mr. HARRISON reported, from the committee on privileges and elections, that the committee had, according to order, had under their further consideration the petition of Mr. Richard Morris, complaining of an undue election and return of William White, as a delegate to serve in this Convention for the county of Louisa, and had agreed upon a report, and come to several resolutions thereupon, resulting as follows—on motion, ordered, that the committee of privileges and elections be discharged from further proceeding on the petition of Richard Morris, and that the petitioner have leave to withdraw the same.

[The 1st and 2d sections of the 3d article still under consideration.]

Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Chairman, it seems to have been a rule with the gentlemen on the other side to argue from the excellency of human nature, in order to induce us to