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no legal obstacle to the assumption by the assembly of 

 all the powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, and 

 that these may come to tiie hands of the smallest rag 

 of delegation, surely the people will say, and their repre- 

 sentatives, while yet they have honest representatives, 

 will advise them to say, that they will not acknowledge 

 as laws any acts not considered and assented to by the 

 major part of their delegates. 



In enumerating the defects of the constitution, it 

 would be wrong to count anjong them what is otily the 

 error of particular persons. In December 1776, our 

 circumstances being much distressed, it was ])roposed 

 in the house of delegates to create a dictator, invested 

 with every power legislative, executive and judiciary, 

 civil and military, of life and of death, over our persons 

 and over our properties : and in June 1781, again under 

 calamity, the sanje proposition was repeated, and want- 

 ed a few votes only of being passed. One who entered 

 into this contest from a pure love of liberty, and a sense 

 of injured rights, who determined to make every sacri- 

 fice, and to meet every danger, for the reestablishment 

 of those rights on a firm basis, who did not mean to ex- 

 pend his blood and substance for the wretched purpose 

 of changing this master for that, but to place the powers 

 of governing him in a plurality of hands of his own 

 choice, so that the corrupt will of no one man might in 

 future oppress him, must stand confounded and dismay- 

 ed when he is told, that a considerable portion of that 

 plurality had meditated the surrender of them into a 

 single hand, and, in lieu of a limited monarchy, to de- 

 liver him over to a despotic one ! How must we find 

 his efforts and sacrifices abused and baffled, if he may 

 still by a single vote be laid prostrate at the feet of one 

 man ! In God's name from whence have they derived 

 this power ? Is it from our ancient laws ? None such 

 can be ])roduced. Is it from any principle in our new 

 constitution expressed or implied ? Every lineament of 

 that expressed or implied, is in full opposition to it. Its 

 fundamental principle is, that the state shall be govern- 

 ed as a commonwealth. It provides a republican or- 



