ceeded to choose delegates to the proposed convention. Now, the last clause in the old Articles of Confederation, after solemnly declaring that they " shall be inviolably observed by every State," added : " Nor shall any alteration, at any time hereafter, be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be after wards confirmed by the legislature of every State." Among the Annapolis commission ers were three of the foremost lawyers in America, — Egbert Benson and Alexander Hamilton of New York, and Edmund Ran dolph of Virginia. Madison was also a com missioner; and both he and Benson were elected to the next Congress, before which their report was destined to come. It is not to be supposed that as lawyers they intended any such irregular action as the calling of a convention without the sanction of Con gress; and how any lawyer then or now, or any one of common-sense, could expect such action to be acquiesced in by a Congress that was presumably sworn to maintain the arti cles, it is hard to see. Dane did not acqui esce, nor did King at first. Some time in October both went home, and harangued the Massachusetts Legislature to such effect that no appointment from that State to the pro posed convention was then made. The move ment, however, under Madison's impulse in Virginia, gathered irresistible headway. Vir ginia chose her delegates, and was followed by New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Caro lina, and Delaware. King, though still pro testing that his opinion as to the legality of the measure was unchanged, ceased then to oppose the shape it had taken; but Dane, whom nothing could shake when his mind was made up, continued to act upon the theory that the right way was the only way, and finally succeeded in his effort to bring the movement under the sanction of Con gress. He was himself the chairman of the general committee that on the 2ist of • February, 1787, reported to that body that they "strongly" recommended to the differ
ent legislatures to send forward delegates. The proceedings then taken show plainly enough where he stood on the main question. The New York members, who were under instructions, and among whom was Benson himself, proposed a substitute resolution that should state it to be the purpose of the Con vention to revise the Articles of Confedera tion, and report to Congress and the States such alterations as it might judge necessary. The Federalists consented to this; and such men as King, Madison, Benson of course, Meredith of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Johnson of Connecticut, afterward President of Colum bia College, all voted for this substitute. But out of the eleven members of the grand com mittee present, only five voted for it; and these were Dane, Cadwallader, Smith, Gray son, and Few. The other six voted against it; and if it is true, as Madison says, that the re port of the grand committee was adopted in the committee itself after a good deal of diffi culty, and by a majority of only one, it looks as though Dane had given the casting vote in favor of the initiatory Federal measure. The New York substitute was lost, and Dane then offered what was probably a compromise reso lution; for, when finally agreed to, after some amendment, it recited the substance of the substitute. Madison could never get it out of his head that Dane was hostile to the Federal idea, and in the private journal that he kept of the debates in Congress he records that he " was at bottom unfriendly to the plan of a conven tion." And again, in the early fall, when the completed work of the Convention was sub mitted to Congress, Madison, who was a mem ber of both bodies, wrote to Washington and Jefferson that certain hostile ideas which had created difficulties in the Convention had made their way into Congress, and were patronized chiefly by R. H. Lee and by Dane, who had made a very serious effort to embarrass it, because they held it im proper for Congress to take any positive agency in subverting the Articles under which it acted. This may all have been so
