they possessed. In the indulgence of this spirit the Delegates from our own Commonwealth of Massachusetts, by express instructions from their constituents, moved a Resolution that the election and acceptance of any person as a member of Congress should forever thereafter be deemed to disqualify such person from being elected by Congress to any office of trust or profit under the United States, for the term for which he should have been elected a member of that body.

This morbid terror of patronage, this patriotic anxiety lest corruption should creep in by appointments of members of Congress to office under the authorities of the Union, has often been reproduced down even to recent days under the present Government of the Union. Upon the theories or the practice of the present age, it is not the time or

But we cannot forbear

the place here to comment. to remark upon the solicitude of our venerable forefathers in this commonwealth, to remedy the imperfection of the Articles of Confederation, the abuses of power, by the Congress of that day, and the avenues to corruption by the appointment of their members to office, when we consider that under the exclusions thus proposed, Washington could never have commanded the armies of the United States: That neither Franklin, John Adams, Arthur Lee, John Jay, Henry Laurens, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, nor Robert R. Livingston could have served them as ministers abroad, or in any ministerial capacity at

home-and when we reflect that two public Ministers in Europe with their Secretaries, one Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one Secretary of War and three Commissioners of an empty Treasury, constituted the whole list of lucrative offices, civil and military, which they had to bestow.

This incident may serve as an illustration of the difficulties which were yet to be encountered before the People of the United States could be prevailed upon to fix their seal of approbation upon a constitution issued in their name, and which granted to a central Government, destined to rule over them all, powers of energy surpassing those of the most absolute monarchy, and forming, in the declared opinion of Jefferson, the strongest Government in the world.

In a people inhabiting so great an extent of Territory, the difficulties to be surmounted before they could be persuaded to adopt this Constitution, were aggravated both by their dissensions and by their agreements by the diversity of their interests and the community of their principles. The collision of interests strongly tended to alienate them from one another, and all were alike imbued with a deep aversion to any unnecessary grant of power. The Constitution was no sooner promulgated than it was assailed in the public journals from all quarters of the Union.

The Convention was boldly and not unjustly charged with having transcended their powers, and the Congress of the Confederation, were censured in

no measured terms for having even referred it to the State Legislatures, to be submitted to the consideration of Conventions of the People.

The Congress of the Confederation were in session at New York. Several of its members had been at the same time members of the Convention at Philadelphia-and among them were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. John Jay was not then a member of Congress nor had he been a member of the Convention-but he was the Secretary of Congress for foreign affairs and had held that office, from the time of his return from Europe, immediately after the conclusion of the definitive Treaty of Peace. He had therefore felt in its most painful form the imbecility of the Confederacy of which he was the minister, equally incapable of contracting engagements with foreign powers with the consciousness of the power to fulfil them, or of energy to hold foreign nations to the responsibility of performing the engagements contracted on their part with the United States. New York, then the central point of the confederacy, was the spot whence the most effective impression could be made by cool, dispassionate argument on the public mind; and in the midst of the tempest of excitement throughout the country occasioned by the sudden and unexpected promulgation of a system so totally different from that of the Confederation, these three persons undertook in concert, by a series of popular Essays published in the daily journals of the time, to review the system of the Confederation, to

demonstrate its inaptitude not only to all the functions of Government, but even to the preservation of the Union, and the necessity of an establishment at least as energetic as the proposed Constitution to the very existence of the United States as a Nation.

The papers under the signature of Publius were addressed to the People of the State of New York, and the introductory Essay, written by Hamilton, declared the purpose to discuss all topics of interest connected with the adoption of the Constitution. The utility of the Union to the prosperity of the People The insufficiency of the Confederation to preserve that Union: The necessity of an energetic Government: The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of a republican Government: Its analogy to the Constitution of the State of New York, and the additional security which its adoption would afford to the preservation of republican Government, to liberty and to property. The fulfilment of this purpose was accomplished in eighty-six numbers, frequently since republished, and now constituting a classical work in the English language, and a commentary upon the Constitution of the United States, of scarcely less authority than the Constitution itself. Written in separate numbers, and in very unequal proportions, it has not indeed that entire unity of design, or execution which might have been expected, had it been the production of a single mind. Nearly two-thirds of the papers were written by Mr. Hamilton. Nearly one third by Mr. Madison, and five numbers only by Mr. Jay.

In the distribution of the several subjects embraced in the plan of the work, the inducements to adopt the Constitution arising from the relations of the Union with foreign nations, were presented by Mr. Jay; the defects of the Confederation in this respect were so obvious, and the evil consequences flowing from them, were so deeply and universally felt, that the task was of comparative ease, and brevity, with that of the other two contributors. The defects of the Confederation were indeed a copious theme for them all; and in the analysis of them, for the exposition of their bearing on the Legislation of the several States, the two principal writers treated the subject so as to interlace with each other. The 18th, 19th, and 20th numbers are the joint composition of both. In examining closely the points selected by these two great co-operators to a common cause, and their course of argument for its support, it is not difficult to perceive that diversity of genius and of character which afterwards separated them so widely from each other on questions of political interest, affecting the construction of the Constitution which they so ably defended, and so strenuously urged their countrymen to adopt. The ninth and tenth numbers are devoted to the consideration of the utility of the Union as a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection. They are rival dissertations upon faction and its remedy. The propensity of all free governments to the convulsions of faction is admitted by both. The advantages of a confederated republic of extensive dimensions to control this admitted and