[764] Professor Beard, in his exposition of the economic origins of the Constitution, shows that nearly all of the men who framed it were wealthy or allied with property interests and that many of them turned up as holders of Government securities. (Beard: Econ. I. C., chap. v.) As a matter of fact, none but such men could have gone to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, so great were the difficulties and so heavy the expenses of travel, even if the people had been minded to choose poorer and humbler persons to represent them; at any rate, they did not elect representatives of their own class until the Constitution was to be ratified and then, of course, only to State Conventions which were accessible.
[765] Weld, i, 47-48.
[766] Johnston to Iredell, Jan. 30, 1790; McRee, ii, 279.
[767] "Letters of a Federal Farmer," no. 2; Ford: P. on C., 292.
[768] Ib., no. 3, 302.
[769] De Warville made a record trip from Boston to New York in less than five days. (De Warville, 122.) But such speed was infrequent.
[770] Josiah Quincy's description of his journey from Boston to New York in 1794. (Quincy: Figures of the Past, 47-48.)
[771] De Warville, 138-39.
[772] Watson, 266.
[773] "The road is execrable; one is perpetually mounting and descending and always on the most rugged roads." (Chastellux, 20.)