The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-08-28
ORIGIN OF CONSTITUTION.
II Lay 10 a Private Project for the
Establishment Of an Inter.
state Canal.

From a paper read Thursday at
Cleveland, o., before the American Bar
association, by Robert Mather, esq, of
the Chicago bar, the following interest
ing excerpt is called:
A private project for the establish
ment of line of interstate transpor-
tation was the moving force that led
to the adoption of the Constitution.
Washington, having surrendered his
sword to the Continental congress,
turned his energies, as private citizen,
to the development of a peaceful and
Industrial means, of the national spirit
which, as leader of the army, 1t had
been his opportunity to foster and
maintain by force of arms. His COM
prehensive foresight had already
peopled, in fancy, the unknown and
illimitable northwest. He realized that
the only tie that could bind this future
empire to the newly born nation in the
east was the bond of commercial inter-
course. Navigation, the only adequate
means of transportation at that time,
furnished to this vast territory a ma
tural and easy outlet. by the Mississippi
and Ohio rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico,
where, at New Orleans, the Spanish
power offered protection and CONNER
cial opportunity to the interior.
To divert the flow of commerce from
this natural channel and to insure
thereby the peaceful and permanent
alliance of the northwest with the fed
eral power on the Atlantic coast, Wash
ington fathered and fostered a pro-
ject for the building of a canal which
should join the waters of the Ohio
with those of Chesapeake Bay. The
great obstacle in the way of this
scheme, which thus united the hope of
private profit with a project of federal
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. lay in the sovereign
power of each of the states which the
canal must traverse, to regulate and
to tax the canal and the commerce it
was designed to carry. The diverse and
harassing exercise of this power by the
several colonies had produced that
condition of commercial confusion
which. more than anything else, had
condemned the Articles of Confereda-
tion as plan of federal union. 1t was
to prevent the embarrassments which
the exercise of this power might inn
pose upon his projected instrument of
commerce, that Maryland and Virginia,
ana afterwards Pennsylvania and Della
ware, at Washington's suggestion, tried
TO agree on some uniform plan of COM
mercial regulations From this grew
the Annapolis convention to which all
the colonies were invited to discuss
plans for uniformity of legislation on
commercial subjects. The universal
conviction which these discussions pro-
duced that the power 10 regulate COM
merce among the colonies and with
foreign nations should be withdrawn
from the states and confided to the GEN.
itral government, led to the calling of
the convention at Philadelphia.
The work of the Constitutional Con-
vention was a growth which far ex-
ceeded the promises of it's beginning;
the suggestion for the adoption of a
uniform code of commercial regulations
grew into national spirit which con-
verted the tottering confederation into
united and puissant nation. The
greatness of the work of that conven-
ton has long since overshadowed the
cause that called it together; but the
historic fact Is never to be forgotten
that the necessity of removing the sub
Ject of the transportation of persons
and property from the power of state
regulation was the immediate cause of
the formation of the Constitution.