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. McLean, 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." 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 its delegates in Congress, where he took his seat in March, 1780.1 From this time to the assembling of the Federal Convention in 1787, his services to the Union were of the most important character. He entered Congress without a national reputation, but with national views. Indeed, it may be said of him, that he came from his native Commonwealth,-"mother of great men," grown to the full proportions of a continental statesman. At the moment when he appeared upon the larger theatre of the national interests, the Articles of Confederation had not been finally ratified by all the States. Maryland had insisted, as a necessary condition of her accession to the new Confederacy, that the great States should surrender to the Union their immense claims to the unoccupied territories of the West; Virginia had remonstrated against this demand; and the whole scheme of the Confederation had thus been long encountered by an apparently insurmountable obstacle. The generous example of New York, whose Western claims were ceded to the United States in the month preceding Mr. Madison's entry into Congress, had furnished to the advocates of the Union the means for a powerful appeal to both sides of this critical and delicate controversy; but it required great tact, discretion, and address to make that appeal effectual, by inducing Maryland to trust to the 1 Article "Madison" in the Penny Encylopædia, written for that work by Professor George Tucker of the University of Virginia. 2 Ante, pp. 131-141. influence of this example upon Virginia, and by inducing Virginia to make a cession that would be satisfactory to Maryland. In this high effort of statesmanship-a domestic diplomacy full of diffi culties Mr. Madison took part. He did not prepare the very skilful report which, while it aimed to produce cessions of their territorial claims by the larger States, appealed to Maryland to anticipate the result;1 but the vast concession by which Virginia yielded the Northwestern Territory to the Union was afterwards brought about mainly by his exertions. In 1782, he united with Hamilton in the celebrated report prepared by the latter upon the refusal of the State of Rhode Island to comply with the recommendations of Congress for a duty on imports.2 In 1783, he was named first upon a committee with Ellsworth and Hamilton, to prepare an Address to the States, urging the adoption of the revenue system which has been described in a previous chapter, and the Address was written by him. The great ability and high tone of this paper gave it a striking effect. The object of this plan of revenue was, as we have seen, to fund the national debts, and to make a sufficient provision for their discharge. have already assigned to it the merit of having preserved the Union from the premature decay that had begun to destroy its vitality; and it may here be added, that the statesman whose pen could produce 1 It was drawn by James Duane of New York. 2 Ante, pp. 174, 206–208. 3 Ante, pp. 177–179. I |