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1 Samuel B. Harding, Party Struggles over the First Pennsylvania Constitution 371 (1895)

handle is hein.prestate/psofpc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: XXI.-PARTY STRUGGLES OVER THE FIRST PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION. By SAMUEL B. HARDING. In speaking of the violence manifested in Pennsylvania by the opponents of the Federal Constitution, Madison says, in one of his letters to Jefferson:' The cause of the inflamma- tion, however, is much more in their State factions than in the system proposed by the conveiio'ni'' In this statement he gives the clew to the whole course of the contest in that State. The most superficial examination of the writings of those par- ticipating in it soon brings one face to face with this fact. Yet nowhere in the later writings about the Constitution, so far as the present writer is aware, is this fact taken sufficiently into account. Bancroft quotes this statement from Madison, but gives no elucidation of it; Curtis ignores the qnestion; and Professor McMaster, despite his research in this field, by no means makes clear the relationi of State to Federal politics in this conuection. A brief account, therefore, of the party struggles in the State during and immediately following the Revolution, and the way in which these influenced the contest over the Federal Constitution, may not be without some gen- eral interest to students of American history. At the beginning of the contest with Great Britain the con- trol of affairs in Pennsylvania was still in the hands of the aristocratic element of the province, which centered in Phila- delphia and the richer and more thickly settled counties adja- cent thereto, and whose power politically was supported by the requirement of a £50 property qualification for the fran- chise. To the natural conservatism of this element, resulting from the possession of property and assured social position, there was added the conservatism spri ging from the religious ' February 19. 1788: Madison's ritings, I, p. 377. 371

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