the best model for free nations1. He feared anarchy, and thought that only a strong national government could avert it. And in a remarkable letter written in February, 1802, under the influence of disappointment with the course events were then taking, he describes, in his somewhat sweeping way, the Constitution he was 'still labouring to prop' as a 'frail and worthless fabric.'

We may therefore legitimately treat his list of evils to be provided against by the new Federal Government as indicating the permanently mischievous tendencies which he foresaw. Some of them, he is obliged to admit, cannot be wholly averted by any constitutional devices, but only by the watchful intelligence and educated virtue of the people.

The evils chiefly feared are the following:

1. The spirit and power of faction, which is so clearly the natural and necessary offspring of tendencies always present in mankind, that wherever liberty exists it must be looked for 2.

Its causes are irremovable; all you can do is to control its effects, and the best prospect of overcoming them is afforded by the representative system and the wide area of the United States with the diversities among its population.

2. Sudden impulses, carrying the people away and inducing hasty and violent measures 3.

3. Instability in foreign policy, due to changes in

1 Though he, like other observers of that time, had not realized, and might not have relished, the supremacy, now become omnipotence, which the House of Commons had already won.

2 The Federalist, No. X (written by Madison), and in other letters. 3 The Federalist, No. LXII.

the executive and in public sentiment, and rendering necessary the participation of a comparatively small council or Senate in the management of this department.

4. Ill-considered legislation. Facility and excess of law-making ',' and 'inconstancy and mutability in the laws 2,' form the 'greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments.'

5. The Legislature is usually the strongest power in free governments. It will seek, as the example of the English Parliament shows, to encroach upon the other departments; and this is especially to be feared from the House of Representatives as holding the power of the purse 3.

6. The States, and especially the larger States, may overbear the Federal Government. They have closer and more constant relations with the citizen, because they make and administer the ordinary laws he lives under. His allegiance has hitherto belonged to them, and may not be readily given to the central authority. In a struggle, should a struggle come, State power is likely to prevail against Federal power.

7. There is in republics a danger that the majority may oppress the minority. Already conspicuous in some of the State governments, as for instance in Rhode Island, this danger may be diminished by the applica

1 The Federalist, No. LXI.

2 The Federalist, No. LXXII.

" 'The Legislative Department is everywhere (i. e. in all the States) extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. . . . It is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the People ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions' (The Federalist, No. XLVII). The people have now begun to resort to precautions; but it is not the ambition of State legislatures that is feared, it is their subserviency to private interests or the party machine.

tion of the federal system to the great area of the Union, where 'society will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority 1.?

8. Another source of trouble is disclosed by the rash and foolish experiments which some States have tried in passing laws which threaten the validity of contracts and the security of property. There are also signs of weakness in the difficulty which State Governments have found in raising revenue by direct taxation2. Citizens whose poverty does not excuse their want of public spirit refuse to pay; and the administration fears to coerce them.

Not less instructive than the fears of The Federalist writers are their hopes. Some of the perils which have since been disclosed are not divined. Some institutions which have conspicuously failed are relied on as full of promise.

The method of choosing the President is recommended with a confidence the more remarkable because it was the point on which the Convention had been most divided and had been latest in reaching an agree ment.

'If the manner of the appointment of the Chief Magistrate be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages the union of which was to be wished for.... The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any one who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite 1 The Federalist, No. L. 2 The Federalist, No. XII.

qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honours in a single State, but it will require other talents and a different kind of merit to establish him in the confidence and esteem of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue'.'

It is assumed that America will continue an agricultural and (to a less extent) a commercial country, but that she will not develop manufactures; and also that the fortunes of her citizens will continue to be small. No serious apprehensions regarding the influence of wealth in elections or in politics generally are expressed.

1 The Federalist, No. LXVII. In A. D. 1800, twelve years after Hamilton wrote this passage, the contest for the Presidency lay between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and Hamilton was compelled by his sense of Burr's demerits to urge his party to vote (when the choice came before the House of Representatives) for Jefferson, his own bitter enemy. What he thought of Burr, who, but for his intervention, would certainly have obtained the chief magistracy of the nation (and by whose hand he ultimately died), may be inferred from the fact that he preferred as President the man of whom he thus writes: 'I admit that his (Jefferson's) politics are tinctured with fanaticism; that he is too much in earnest in his democracy; that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principal measures of our past administration; that he is crafty and persevering in his objects; that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth; and that he is a contemptible hypocrite. But, &c.' (Letter to James A. Bayard, Jan. 16, 1801.)

After this it is superfluous, as it would be invidious, to dwell on the deficiencies of some recent Presidents or Presidential candidates.

2 The private fortunes of the President and Senators, as they must all be American citizens, cannot possibly be sources of danger' (The Federalist, No. LIV).

The contingency of a division of the States into two antagonistic groups is not contemplated. When the possibility of State combinations is touched on, it is chiefly with reference to the action of small and of large States respectively. In particular no hint is dropped as to the likelihood of the institution of slavery becoming a bond to unite the Southern States and a cause of quarrel between them and the Northern. Yet slavery had given trouble in the Philadelphia Convention, and an opposition of North and South grounded upon it soon emerged.

Although the mischiefs of faction are dwelt on, nothing indicates that its embodiment in highly developed party systems, whose organizations might overshadow the legal government, had occurred to any one's mind. Still less, of course, is there any anticipation of the influence to be exerted on politics by the distribution of offices. Not till long afterwards were they treated as 'spoils of war.'

III. CRITICISM OF THE PREDICTIONS OF 1788.

Let us now see which of these views and forecasts have been verified by the event.

Of those put forth by the opponents of the Constitution not one has proved true. The States are still strong, the President is not a despot, though for a time during the Civil War he came near being one, nor has he ever fallen under the influence of any European power. The House does not consist of the 'wealthy and wellborn.' The larger States do not combine against nor press hardly on the smaller. No great country has had so few wars or indeed so few foreign complications