in a premature grave, the basis on which this government was consolidated; on which, to the present day, it has been administered; and on which alone it can safely rest in that future, which seems so to stretch out its unending glories before us. Mr. Hamilton, therefore, I conceive, proved himself early to be a statesman of greater talent and power than the celebrated English minister whose youthful success was in the eyes of the world so much more brilliant, and whose early death was no less disheartening; for none can doubt, that to build up a free and firm state out of a condition of political chaos, and to give it a government capable of developing the resources of its soil and people, and of insuring to it prosperity, power, and permanence, is a greater work than to administer with energy and success even in periods of severe trial the constitution of an empire whose principles and modes of action have been settled for centuries. Hamilton was one of those statesmen who trust to the efficacy of the press for the advancement and inculcation of correct principles of public policy, and who desire to accomplish important results mainly through the action of an enlightened public opinion. That he had faith in the intelligence and honesty of his countrymen, is proved by the numerous writings which he constantly addressed to their reason and good sense, in the shape of essays or letters, from the beginning to the end of his career, upon subjects on which it was important that they should act with wisdom and principle. His own opinions, although held with great firmness, were also held in subordination to what was practicable. It was the rare felicity of his temperament, to be able to accept a less good than his principles might have led him to insist upon, and to labor for it, when nothing better could be obtained, with as much patriotic energy and zeal as if it had been the best result of his own views. The Constitution itself remains, in this particular, a monument of the disinterestedness of his character. He thought it had great defects. But he accepted it, as the best government that the wisdom of the Convention could frame, and the best that the nation would adopt. In this spirit, as soon as it was promulgated for the acceptance of the country, he came forward and placed himself in the foremost rank of its advocates, making himself, for all future time, one of the chief of its authoritative expounders. He was very ably assisted in the Federalist by Madison and Jay; but it was from him that the Federalist derived the weight and the power which commanded the careful attention of the country, and carried conviction to the great body of intelligent men in all parts of the Union. The extraordinary forecast with which its luminous discussions anticipated the operation of the new institutions, and its profound elucidation of their principles, gave birth to American constitutional law, which was thus placed at once above the field of arbitrary constructions and in the domain of legal truth. They made it a science; and so long as the Constitution shall exist, they will continue to be resorted to as the most important source of contemporaneous interpretation which the annals of the country afford.1 In the two paramount characters of statesman and 1 The current editions of the Federalist are taken from an edition published at Washington in 1818, by Jacob Gideon, in which the numbers written by Mr. Madison purport to have been corrected by himself. There had been three editions previous to this. The first edition was published in 1788, in two small volumes, by J. & A. M'Lean, 41 Hanover Square, New York, under the following title: "The Federalist: a Collection of Essays written in Favor of the New Constitution, as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787." The first volume was issued before the last of the essays were written, and the second followed it, as soon as the series was completed. The authentic text of the work is to be found in this edition; two of the authors were in the city of New York at the time it was printed, and probably superintended it. It was reissued from the same type, in 1789, by John Tiebout, 358 Pearl Street, New York. A second edition was published in 1802, at New York, in two volumes, containing also "Pacificus on the Proclamation of Neutrality, and the Constitution, with its Amendments." A third edition was published in 1810, by Williams & Whiting, New York. I have seen copies of the first and second editions only, in the li brary of Peter Force, Esq., of Washington, editor of the " American Archives." There are some discrepancies between the text of the first edition and that of 1818, from which the current editions are taken. By whom or on what authority the alterations were made, I have not been able to ascertain, nor have I learned when, or why, or how far Mr. Madison may have corrected or altered the papers which he wrote. Such of the changes as I have examined do not materially affect the sense; but it is very desirable that the true text of the Federalist should be reproduced. That text exists in the first edition, which was issued while the Constitution was before the people of the United States for their ratification; and as the Federalist was an argument addressed to the people in favor of the adoption of the Constitution, the exact text of that argument, as it was read and acted upon, ought to be restored, without regard to the reasons which may have led any of the writers, or any one else, to alter it. I know of no evidence that Colonel Hamilton ever made or sanctioned the alteration of a word. After the text of the Constitution itself, there is scarcely any thing the preservation of which is more important than the text of the Federalist as it was first published. jurist, in the comprehensive nature of his patriotism, in his freedom from sectional prejudices, in his services to the Union, and in the kind and magnitude of his intellect, posterity will recognize a resemblance to him whom America still mourns with the freshness of a recent grief, and who has been to the Constitution, in the age that has succeeded, what Hamilton was in the age that witnessed its formation and establishment. Without the one of these illustrious men, the Constitution probably would never have existed; without the other, it might have become a mere record of past institutions, whose history had been glorious until faction and civil discord had turned it into a record of mournful recollections. The following sentences, written by Hamilton soon after the adjournment of the Convention, contain a clew to all his conduct in support of the plan of government which that body recommended: "It may be in me a defect of political fortitude, but I acknowledge that I cannot feel an equal tranquillity with those who affect to treat the dangers of a longer continuance in our present situation as imaginary. A nation without a national government is an awful spectacle. The establishment of a constitution, in a time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy, to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety." 771 CHAPTER IX. MADISON. FROM Hamilton we naturally turn to his associate in the Federalist, - James Madison, afterwards fourth President of the United States, whose faithful and laborious record has preserved to us the debates of the Convention. Mr. Madison was thirty-six years old when he entered that assembly. His previous life had fitted him to play a conspicuous and important part in its proceedings. He was born in 1751, of a good famiily, in Orange County, Virginia, and was educated at Princeton College in New Jersey, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1772. He returned to Virginia in the spring of 1773, and commenced the usual studies preparatory to an admission to the bar; but the disputes between the Colonies and the mother country soon drew him into public life. In 1776, he became a member of the State Convention which formed the first Constitution of Virginia. He was afterwards a member of the legislature and of the Council of the State, until he was appointed one of |