The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School

Notes of Robert Yates on the Debates in the Federal Convention 1787 - Tuesday, May 29

TUESDAY, MAY 29TH, 1787.

The additional rules agreed to.

His excellency Governor Randolph, a member from Virginia, got up, and in a long and elaborate speech, showed the defects in the system of the present federal government as totally inadequate to the peace, safety, and security of the confederation, and the absolute necessity of a more energetic government.

He closed these remarks with a set of resolutions, fifteen in number(1), which he proposed to the convention for their adoption, and as leading principles whereon to form a new government. He candidly confessed that they were not intended for a federal government-he meant a strong consolidated union, in which the idea of states should be nearly annihilated. [I have taken a copy of these resolutions, which are hereunto annexed.]

He then moved that they should be taken up in committee of the whole house.

Mr. C. Pinkney, a member from South Carolina, then added, that he had reduced his ideas of a new government to a system, which he read, and confessed it was grounded on the same principle as of the above resolutions.

The house then resolved, that they would the next day form themselves into a committee of the whole, to take into consideration the state of the union.

Adjourned to next day.

(1) For the Virginia Plan presented by Edmund Randolph see Variant Texts A, B and C [Note Inserted by the Avalon Project] Back