are we now assembled here?  A federal government is formed for the protection of its individual members.  Ours was itself attacked with impunity.  Its authority has been boldly disobeyed and openly despised.  I think I perceive a glaring inconsistency in another of his arguments.  He complains of this Constitution, because it requires the consent of at least three fourths of the States to introduce amendments which shall be necessary for the happiness of the people.  The assent of so many, he considers as too great an obstacle to the admission of salutary amendments, which he strongly insists ought to be at the will of a bare majority, and we hear this argument at the very moment we are called upon to assign reasons for proposing a Constitution which puts it in the power of nine States to abolish the present inadequate, unsafe, and pernicious confederation!  In the first case, he asserts that a majority ought to have the power of altering the government, when found to be inadequate to the security of public happiness.  In the last case, he affirms that even three fourths of the community have not a right to alter a government which experience has proved to be subversive of national felicity; nay, that the most necessary and urgent alterations cannot be made without the absolute unanimity of all the States.  Does not the thirteenth article of the confederation expressly require, that no alteration shall be made without the unanimous consent of all the States?  Can any thing in theory be more perniciously improvident and injudicious than this submission of the will of the majority to the most trifling minority?  Have not experience and practice actually manifested this theoretical inconvenience to be extremely impolitic?  Let me mention one fact, which I conceive must carry conviction to the mind of any one,—­the smallest State in the Union has obstructed every attempt to reform the government; that little member has repeatedly disobeyed and counteracted the general authority; nay, has even supplied the enemies of its country with provisions.  Twelve States had agreed to certain improvements which were proposed, being thought absolutely necessary to preserve the existence of the general government; but as these improvements, though really indispensable, could not, by the confederation, be introduced into it without the consent of every State, the refractory dissent of that little State prevented their adoption.  The inconveniences resulting from this requisition of unanimous concurrence in alterations of the confederation, must be known to every member in this convention; it is therefore needless to remind them of them.  Is it not self-evident, that a trifling minority ought not to bind the majority?  Would not foreign influence be exerted with facility over a small minority?  Would the honorable gentleman agree to continue the most radical defects in the old system, because the petty State of Rhode Island would not agree to remove them?