De Alexander

With acidulated satire, Van Ness, enrapturing his hearers by his brilliancy, held them up to public ridicule if not to public detestation.

It is impossible to read, without regret, of the voluntary stultification of these orators, pleading piteously for the appointment of justices of the peace while declaiming with passionate righteousness against the appointment of sheriffs.

It seemed like a travesty, since there was not an argument in favour of electing sheriffs that did not apply with added force to the election of justices.

Each locality knew the men in whom it could trust to settle its disputes, and farmers as well as townspeople should be allowed to select the arbitrator of all their petty quarrels and disagreements.

He believed in a central appointing power, which the Albany Regency might control, and, that such power should not be impotent, these minor and many magistrates, thickly distributed throughout the State, with a jurisdiction broad enough to…

His vigorous protests in the committee-room against the election of surrogates, sheriffs and county clerks had defeated that proposition, and in referring to the section of the report making justices of the peace elective, he said it had…

In the absence of higher courts, neighbours were compelled to go before him, and in settling their troubles, it was usually understood that he held the scales of justice without being blindfolded.

He was usually the strongest character in his vicinage, and whether he followed the plow, or wore upon the bench the homely working clothes in which he tended cattle, he was none the less familiar with the politics of every suitor in his…

Van Buren had made it plain, by his exhaustive argument, that constitution-makers, seeking the latest expression of the people's will, could devise no better plan, and that experience in the newest States having the same system, had…

The constitutions recently formed in Kentucky, Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, he said, had such a provision--similar, in fact, to that in the Federal Constitution--and, although this method was open to objection, the committee…

But, sir, am I on that account to indulge my individual resentment in the prostration of my private and political adversary?

It must be admitted, too, that the evils which he prophesied, if universal suffrage were given to New York City, have been too unhappily verified.

And dare we flatter ourselves that we are a peculiar people, who can run the career of history exempted from the passions which have disturbed and corrupted the rest of mankind?

That extreme democratic principle has been regarded with terror by the wise men of every age, because in every European republic, ancient and modern, in which it has been tried, it has terminated disastrously, and been productive of…

The debate, however, which aroused the greatest interest, and in which members of the convention most generally participated, sprang from Ambrose Spencer's proposition limiting to freeholders the right to vote for senators.

Nearly three-fourths of the voters of the State withheld it in 1846; and, six years after President Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, when the black soldier had served his country throughout the Civil War with a fidelity and courage…

Again the advocates of universal suffrage favoured the proposition, and the friends of a freehold qualification opposed it; but this time the convention decided against the negro, thirty-three to seventy-one.

But, on the questions of suffrage and the judiciary, the convention was thrown into weeks of violent debate, memorable by prophecies never fulfilled, and by criticism that the future quickly disproved.

The convention's work centred about three great principles--broader suffrage, enlarged local government, and a more popular judiciary system.

Root and Young did more talking, but when others had argued until argument seemed hopeless, Van Buren usually spoke the last word with success.

It recalls the mistake of the historic conclave which elected a Pope whom the cardinals believed too feeble to have any will of his own, but who suddenly became their master.

Chancellor Kent, in giving his reasons for disapproving the measure, contended that the Legislature had no constitutional authority to create a convention of unlimited powers, and, if it did, it should require the convention to submit its…

Governor Clinton preferred a convention of limited powers, a convention that could not abolish the judiciary or turn out of office the only friends left him.

Following this suggestion, Governor Clinton, in his speech to the Legislature in November, 1820, recommended that the question be submitted to the people.

The people of New York City, as well, who had increased over fifty per cent. in twelve years, clamoured for a radical change in conditions that seemed to them to have no application to life in a republic.