Newspaper Report 4 of Pennsylvania Convention Proceedings (December 1, 1787)

Benjamin Rush: (on the subject of the new government tending to abridge the states of their respective sovereignty) observed in the Convention, that this passion for separate sovereignty had destroyed the Grecian union. This plurality of sovereignty is in politics what plurality of gods is in religion- it is the idolatry, the heathenism of government. In marking the advantages which are secured to us by the new government, the Doctor principally enforced the following: that citizens under it will have an immediate voice in delegations to Congress;1 that an unoffending posterity will not (as is now the case on commission of treason) be punished for the sins of offending ancestors; that an eternal veto will be stamped on paper emissions; that religious tests would be abolished; that commerce will hold up her declining head under the influence of general, vigorous, uniform regulations; that a system of infinite mischief to this state would be counteracted; that the adopted certificates would devolve back to the continent. The Doctor concluded an animated speech by holding out the new Constitution as pregnant with an increase of freedom, knowledge, and religion.2