Autobiography of Seventy Years | Page 6

the provision that no State
should be deprived of its equal vote without its consent.
When Mr. Sherman's known tenacity, and his influence over the great
men with whom he was associated, testified to by so many of them, is
borne in mind, it seems there can be no doubt that he is entitled to the
chief credit of carrying out the scheme which he himself devised, and
which, years before the Convention met, he himself first moved in the
Continental Congress for which he made the first argument, and which
was reported from the committee of which he was a member,
representing the State which gave the name to the Compromise. His
motion, which was adopted, that no State should be deprived of its
equal vote in the Senate without its consent, made the equality secure.*
[Footnote] * See Boutell's "Life of Roger Sherman," Lodge's "Flying

Frigate, --Address on Ellsworth," Proceedings Am. Ant. Soc., October,
1902. [End of Footnote]
Second: In 1774, when Mr. Adams was on his way to the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia, he records in his diary that he met Roger
Sherman at New Haven, who, he says, "is a solid and sensible man."
Mr. Sherman said to him that he thought the Massachusetts patriots,
especially Mr. Otis, in his argument for the Writs of Assistance, had
given up the whole case when they admitted that Parliament had the
power to legislate for the Colonies under any circumstances whatever.
He lived to join in the report from the committee, and to sign the
Declaration of Independence, which put the case on his ground. The
Declaration of Independence does not recognize Parliament at all,
except indirectly, when it says the King "has combined with others" to
do the wrongs which are complained of.
Third: In 1752 the whole country was overrun with paper money. Mr.
Sherman published in that year a little pamphlet, entitled, "A Caveat
Against Injustice, or An Inquiry Into the Evil Consequences of a
Fluctuating Medium of Exchange." He stated with great clearness and
force the arguments which, unhappily, we have been compelled to
repeat more than once in later generations. He denounced paper money
as "a cheat, vexation, and snare, a medium whereby we are continually
cheating and wronging one another in our dealings and commerce." He
adds, "So long as we import so much more foreign goods than are
necessary, and keep so many merchants and traders employed to
procure and deal them out to us: a great part of which we might as well
make among ourselves; and another great part of which we had much
better be without, especially the spiritous liquors, of which vast
quantities are consumed in the colony every year, unnecessarily, to the
great destruction of estates, morals, healths and even the lives of many
of the inhabitants,-- I say, so long as these things are so, we shall spend
a great part of our labor and substance for that which will not profit us.
Whereas, if these things were reformed, the provisions and other
commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other
governments are dependent upon us for, would procure us gold and
silver abundantly sufficient for a medium of trade. And we might be as

independent, flourishing and happy a colony as any in the British
Dominions."
He lived to move in the Convention, and to procure its insertion in the
Constitution, the clause that no State should make anything but gold
and silver legal tender.
Fourth: Mr. Sherman took his seat in the Federal Convention May 30,
1787. Mr. Randolph's resolution, submitted on the 29th day of May,
being before the Convention the next day, included the proposition that
the National Legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative
rights vested in Congress by the confederation, "and moreover to
legislate in all cases in which the separate States are incompetent," --the
question being whether the clause authorizing Congress to legislate in
all cases in which the separate States are incompetent should be
retained, every State in the Convention voted Aye, except Connecticut.
Connecticut was divided. Ellsworth voted Aye, and Sherman, No.
Mr. Sherman lived, not only to sign a Constitution of limited powers,
but himself to support the Tenth Article of Amendment thereto, which
is as follows:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people." The words "or to the people" were moved by Mr.
Sherman after the original article was reported. So he saw clearly in the
beginning, what no other member saw, the two great American
principles, first that the National Government should be a Government
of limited and delegated powers, and next, that there is a domain of
legislation