76 INTRODUCTION. 



" I fully concur in the fitness and expediency of this convention ; and although I 

 am fully of opinion that the change of circumstances and political relations in 

 our country have imperiously required the interposition of the people to revise 

 the constitution, yet it is my hope that the convention may proceed vi^ith great 

 caution and moderation. Not only," said he, " are the great principles of free 

 government which arise from, and are sustained by, the intelligence and virtue 

 of the people, denied by the great nations of the old world, but a contrary and 

 most slavish doctrine is proclaimed and enforced by them; a doctrine which 

 falsely assumes that a select portion of mankind only are set apart by Providence, 

 and made solely responsible for the government of mankind. In contradiction 

 to this theory it is our bounden duty to make it manifest to all men, that a free 

 people are capable of self-government ; that they can make, and abate, and re- 

 make their constitution ; and that, at all times, our public liberties, when impaired, 

 may be renovated, without destroying those securities which education and man- 

 ners, our laws and constitutions, have pro^dded." 



The governor, chancellor, chief justice and justices of the supreme court, 

 under the old constitution, were a council to revise bills which passed both 

 houses ; and bills which were returned with objections failed to become laws, 

 unless they received the votes of two-thirds of the members. A committee pro- 

 posed to abolish this part of the constitution, and to confide the revising power 

 to the executive alone, but to retain the provision declaring that bills should 

 become laws if passed by two-thirds of the members of both houses. The pro- 

 position to abolish the council of revision was unanimously adopted. Ambrose 

 Spencer, then chief justice, admitted the expediency of separating the judges 

 from the legislative power, but opposed with zeal the vesting the power in the 

 governor, unless he was made more independent of the legislature. Peter R. 

 Livingston strenuously labored to obtain such a modification of the proposed 

 amendment as would permit bills, returned with objections, to pass, if they should 

 then receive the votes of two-thirds of the members elected to each house. 

 Jonas Piatt, then a justice of the supreme court, and member of the council of 



