Bledsoe and Colonel Grayson’s Case for a Compact on the Constitution

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – There’s just one member of the founding generation saying there are a couple instances that we need this general, central government, but it’s certainly not for all the hysterical reasons that the Federalists are telling us we must have it for.  If Colonel William Grayson could only see all the hobgoblins that we must have the general government to present today.  If he could only see the microbial world.  If he could only see the amoebas and the bacteria and the viruses and all the other things that presume to be out there waiting to attack the people of the several states if their magisterial general government isn’t there to stop them. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  One of the most profound parts of Bledsoe’s book is to be found in the last three chapters, and especially in the penultimate chapter, the second to last.  That is, in his irrefutable case as to when it was the responsibility and the duty of the states to end their affiliation in the union.  No, Lincoln’s war did not change this.  Nothing has changed the conditions that were there in 1861.  Nothing has changed the conditions that were there when the New England states wanted to do it in 1815 and 1803.  I would suggest to you that because today the — what were the reasons that states entered into the union?  This is the most important part of Bledsoe’s work.  The reasons were because they desired peace and harmony and felicity with their fellow states, but mostly that they desired a method by which to conduct trade and to defend themselves.  That pretty much sums up what it was that animated the men we call founding fathers to do this.

The union was not entered into to be a confiscatory neighbor or to be an organ that would exist in superiority to the states, quite the contrary.  Only in a few and those very specifically crafted enumerated powers was that edifice to exist in superiority.  If at any point in time it exceeded its charter and exceeded the powers that had been delegated to it, and if it resisted a redress of those grievances, any state that was a member had the right and duty to resume the state of affairs that they were experiencing before their ratification of the Constitution or their application, which they would have to ratify the Constitution and then become a member state of the union.  That’s still applicable today.

With all the things that are inveighed and weighed against the states and the people of the states complain mightily about, if you really want to do something about it, the path is clear.  You just tell it you’re not going to do it anymore and you’re dropping out.  The great secret here is that most people, even though the public opinion polls are turning towards independence and separation or secession, most people don’t have a hang-up with the general government asserting and abusing powers that it was never granted or delegated.  It basically has invented its own charter and continues to invent its own charter as if it has the authority to do so because it is superior.  That is the antithesis of the argument that was used to bring the creature into existence to start with.  We’re already way beyond the point of separation.  Any state would be justified in a manner of a couple thousand instances to sever the bonds of the agreement.  The people don’t want to do that because they’re comfy with the welfare state and comfy with the warfare state, but that may be changing.

What I found really interesting in running down some footnotes in the Bledsoe work, and this is applicable today, was the case that was made by some of the federalists as to why we must have a federal government.  Back to John Quincy Adams and monsters to destroy, many of those guys who called themselves Federalists — among them James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and in Virginia, the Governor of Virginia at the time, Edmund Randolph — they said: If we don’t have a strong general government or a strong union, people are going to come in here and rob, rape, pillage.  They’re going to invade and we’ll all die.  I’m not exaggerating.  I found this in the transcript of the debates in the Virginia Ratification Convention.  This is Colonel William Grayson, who is following Governor Randolph.  Randolph has just laid out the decepticon case basically that we’ve got to have a union and if we don’t we’re all going to perish.  Listen to Grayson’s response.  By the way, if you don’t know and you’re a history buff and a resident of the State of Virginia, Colonel William Grayson was among the first men to be sent to the United States Senate appointed by the legislature of Virginia, just so you know.

[reading]

There are certain models of governing the people which will succeed. There are others which will not. The idea of consolidation is abhorrent to the people of this country. How were the sentiments of the people before the meeting of the Convention at Philadelphia? They had only one object in view. Their ideas reached no farther than to give the general government the five per centum impost, and the regulation of trade. When it was agitated in Congress, in a committee of the whole, this was all that was asked, or was deemed necessary. Since that period, their views have extended much farther. Horrors have been greatly magnified since the rising of the Convention.

We are now told by the honorable gentleman (Governor Randolph) that we shall have wars and rumors of wars, that every calamity is to attend us, and that we shall be ruined and disunited forever, unless we adopt this Constitution. Pennsylvania and Maryland are to fall upon us from the north, like the Goths and Vandals of old; the Algerines, whose flat-sided vessels never came farther than Madeira, are to fill the Chesapeake with mighty fleets, and to attack us on our front; the Indians are to invade us with numerous armies on our rear, in order to convert our cleared lands into hunting- grounds; and the Carolinians, from the south, (mounted on alligators, I presume,) are to come and destroy our cornfields, and eat up our little children! These, sir, are the mighty dangers which await us if we reject dangers which are merely imaginary, and ludicrous in the extreme! Are we to be destroyed by Maryland and Pennsylvania? What will democratic states make war for, and how long since have they imbibed a hostile spirit?

But the generality are to attack us. Will they attack us after violating their faith in the first Union? Will they not violate their faith if they do not take us into their confederacy? Have they not agreed, by the old Confederation, that the Union shall be perpetual, and that no alteration should take place without the consent of Congress, and the confirmation of the legislatures of every state? I cannot think that there is such depravity in mankind as that, after violating public faith so flagrantly, they should make war upon us, also, for not following their example.

[end reading]

Mike:  There’s just one member of the founding generation saying there are a couple instances that we need this general, central government, but it’s certainly not for all the hysterical reasons that the Federalists are telling us we must have it for.  If Colonel William Grayson could only see all the hobgoblins that we must have the general government to present today.  If he could only see the microbial world.  If he could only see the amoebas and the bacteria and the viruses and all the other things that presume to be out there waiting to attack the people of the several states if their magisterial general government isn’t there to stop them.  We must wage war against bacteria, they say, and they do this with their FDA.  Oh, to be spared the horrors of drugs that have not been approved by our magisterial FDA.  Oh, to withstand the horrors of eating wheat and using sugar in our coffees that have not been approved by the United States Department of Agriculture.  Or imagine the unthinkable horror of sitting down to enjoy a rib-eye steak that has not been USDA certified Angus.  These are the reasons why we must continue our affiliation and our obeisance and our servitude to what is known today as the federal government.  In other words, I can make as specious but as relevant an argument against continuing in cahoots with the corrupt establishment in Mordor on the Potomac River as Grayson was making against Randolph’s ludicrous claims as well.

In other words, and this is a question I asked Dan McCarthy at The American Conservative magazine: Why don’t you have a forum, a symposium?  Why don’t you ask the greatest and brightest minds of our day to each write an essay?  I’ll write the first one.  Each write an essay and explain the utility of continuing in the 50-state union as currently consecrated with Mordor on the Potomac River as its center.  Can you give good grounds for that endeavor?  If you can’t, then why sit we here either?  I think people are afraid to address that.  I think people are mortified.  They don’t want to do that because if they did, the conclusion, in my opinion, is foregone.  They will conclude that unless it’s for the monetary benefit of printed money that has materialized out of thin air, that the states of their own accession to the federal charter are prohibited from printing and materializing, that if that is removed, there is little if any reason to remain, save for free trade.  Cannot free trade be engaged upon by willing and voluntary members of a union without the corruption and theft of private property, the evisceration of liberties that we currently see all around us?  Please consider your way.

End Mike Church Show Transcript