The bill being now as perfect as its friends can make it, thisis the proper stage for those, fundamentally opposed, to maketheir own attack. All attempts at other periods are with disjointedefforts; because many who do not expect to be in favor42of the bill, ultimately, are willing to let it go on to its perfectstate, to take time to examine it themselves, and to hear whatcan be said for it; knowing that, after all, they have sufficientopportunities of giving it their veto. Its two last stages, therefore,are reserved for this, that is to say, on the question, Whetherit shall be engrossed and read a third time? and, lastly, Whetherit shall pass? The first of these is usually the most interestingcontest; because then the whole subject is new and engaging,and the minds of the members having not yet been declared byany trying vote, the issue is the more doubtful. In this stage,therefore, is the main trial of strength between its friends andopponents; and it behooves every one to make up his mind decisivelyfor this question, or he loses the main battle; and accidentand management may, and often do, prevent a successful rallyingon the next and last question, Whether it shall pass?
READ BOOK Morando Method: One simple question powers the Perfect Close
The alliance between the States under the old Articles ofConfederation, for the purpose of joint defence against the aggressionof Great Britain, was found insufficient, as treaties ofalliance generally are, to enforce compliance with their mutualstipulations; and these, once fulfilled, that bond was to expire ofitself, and each State to become sovereign and independent in allthings. Yet it could not but occur to every one, that these separateindependencies, like the petty States of Greece, would beeternally at war with each other, and would become at lengththe mere partisans and satellites of the leading powers of Europe.All then must have looked forward to some further bond of union,which would insure eternal peace, and a political system of ourown, independent of that of Europe. Whether all should beconsolidated into a single government, or each remain independent89as to internal matters, and the whole form a single nation asto what was foreign only, and whether that national governmentshould be a monarchy or republic, would of course divide opinions,according to the constitutions, the habits, and the circumstancesof each individual. Some officers of the army, as it hasalways been said and believed, (and Steuben and Knox haveever been named as the leading agents,) trained to monarchy bymilitary habits, are understood to have proposed to GeneralWashington to decide this great question by the army before itsdisbandment, and to assume himself the crown on the assuranceof their support. The indignation with which he is said to havescouted this parricide proposition was equally worthy of his virtueand wisdom. The next effort was, (on suggestion of the sameindividuals, in the moment of their separation,) the establishmentof an hereditary order under the name of the Cincinnati, readyprepared by that distinction to be ingrafted into the future frameof government, and placing General Washington still at theirhead. The General wrote to me on this subject, while I was inCongress at Annapolis, and an extract from my letter is insertedin 5th Marshall's history, page 28. He afterwards called on meat that place on his way to a meeting of the society, and after awhole evening of consultation, he left that place fully determinedto use all his endeavors for its total suppression. But he found itso firmly riveted in the affections of the members, that, strengthenedas they happened to be by an adventitious occurrence of themoment, he could effect no more than the abolition of its hereditaryprinciple. He called again on his return, and explained tome fully the opposition which had been made, the effect of theoccurrence from France, and the difficulty with which its durationhad been limited to the lives of the present members.Further details will be found among my papers, in his and myletters, and some in the Encyclopedie Methodique et Dictionnaired'Economie Politique, communicated by myself to M. Meusnier,its author, who had made the establishment of this society theground, in that work, of a libel on our country.
But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchybottomed on corruption. In proof of this, I will relate an anecdote,for the truth of which I attest the God who made me.Before the President set out on his southern tour in April, 1791,he addressed a letter of the fourth of that month, from MountVernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury and War, desiringthat if any serious and important cases should arise during hisabsence, they would consult and act on them. And he requestedthat the Vice President should also be consulted. This wasthe only occasion on which that officer was ever requested totake part in a cabinet question. Some occasion for consultationarising, I invited those gentlemen (and the Attorney General, aswell as I remember,) to dine with me, in order to confer on thesubject. After the cloth was removed, and our question agreedand dismissed, conversation began on other matters, and by somecircumstance, was led to the British constitution, on which Mr.Adams observed, "purge that constitution of its corruption, andgive to its popular branch equality of representation, and it wouldbe the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man."Hamilton paused and said, "purge it of its corruption, and giveto its popular branch equality of representation, and it would becomean impracticable government: as it stands at present, withall its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government whichever existed." And this was assuredly the exact line whichseparated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The onewas for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the97other, for an hereditary King, with a House of Lords and Commonscorrupted to his will, and standing between him and thepeople. Hamilton was, indeed, a singular character. Of acuteunderstanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all privatetransactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in privatelife, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British example,as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was essentialto the government of a nation. Mr. Adams had originally beena republican. The glare of royalty and nobility, during hismission to England, had made him believe their fascination anecessary ingredient in government; and Shay's rebellion, notsufficiently understood where he then was, seemed to prove thatthe absence of want and oppression, was not a sufficient guaranteeof order. His book on the American constitutions havingmade known his political bias, he was taken up by the monarchicalfederalists in his absence, and on his return to the UnitedStates, he was by them made to believe that the general dispositionof our citizens was favorable to monarchy. He herewrote his Davila, as a supplement to a former work, and hiselection to the Presidency confirmed him in his errors. Innumerableaddresses too, artfully and industriously poured inupon him, deceived him into a confidence that he was on thepinnacle of popularity, when the gulf was yawning at his feet,which was to swallow up him and his deceivers. For whenGeneral Washington was withdrawn, these energumeni of royalism,kept in check hitherto by the dread of his honesty, hisfirmness, his patriotism, and the authority of his name, nowmounted on the car of State and free from control, like Phaetonon that of the sun, drove headlong and wild, looking neither toright nor left, nor regarding anything but the objects they weredriving at; until, displaying these fully, the eyes of the nationwere opened, and a general disbandment of them from the publiccouncils took place.
I told him, that in my opinion, there was only a single sourceof these discontents. Though they had indeed appeared to spreadthemselves over the War department also, yet I considered that asan overflowing only from their real channel, which would neverhave taken place, if they had not first been generated in anotherdepartment, to wit, that of the Treasury. That a system had therebeen contrived, for deluging the States with paper money insteadof gold and silver, for withdrawing our citizens from the pursuitsof commerce, manufactures, buildings, and other branches of usefulindustry, to occupy themselves and their capitals in a speciesof gambling, destructive of morality, and which had introducedits poison into the government itself. That it was a fact, ascertainly known as that he and I were then conversing, that particularmembers of the legislature, while those laws were on thecarpet, had feathered their nests with paper, had then voted forthe laws, and constantly since lent all the energy of their talents,and instrumentality of their offices, to the establishment and enlargementof this system; that they had chained it about our necksfor a great length of time, and in order to keep the game in theirhands had, from time to time, aided in making such legislativeconstructions of the constitution, as made it a very different thingfrom what the people thought they had submitted to; that theyhad now brought forward a proposition far beyond any one everyet advanced, and to which the eyes of many were turned, asthe decision which was to let us know, whether we live under alimited or an unlimited government. He asked me to what propositionI alluded? I answered, to that in the report on manufactures,which, under color of giving bounties for the encouragementof particular manufactures, meant to establish the doctrine,that the power given by the constitution to collect taxes to providefor the general welfare of the United States, permitted Congressto take everything under their management which they shoulddeem for the public welfare, and which is susceptible of the applicationof money; consequently, that the subsequent enumeration105of their powers was not the description to which resort mustbe had, and did not at all constitute the limits of their authority;that this was a very different question from that of the bank, whichwas thought an incident to an enumerated power; that, therefore,this decision was expected with great anxiety; that, indeed, Ihoped the proposition would be rejected, believing there was amajority in both Houses against it, and that if it should be, itwould be considered as a proof that things were returning intotheir true channel; and that, at any rate, I looked forward to thebroad representation which would shortly take place, for keepingthe general constitution on its true ground; and that this wouldremove a great deal of the discontent which had shown itself.The conversation ended with this last topic. It is here statednearly as much at length as it really was; the expressions preservedwhere I could recollect them, and their substance always faithfullystated.
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