pers of the Federalist. Patrick Henry pursued his hostility to the system into all its details; objecting not only to the Preamble and the first Article, but to the Senate, to the President, to the Judicial Power, to the treaty making power, to the control given to Congress over the militia, and especially to the omission of a Bill of Rights-seconded and sustained with great ability by George Mason, who had been a member of the Convention which formed the Constitution, by James Monroe and William Grayson, there was not a controvertible point, real or imaginary, in the whole instrument which escaped their embittered opposition; while upon every point Mr. Madison was prepared to meet them, with cogent argument, with intent and anxious feeling, and with mild, conciliatory gentleness of temper, disarming the adversary by the very act of seeming to decline contention with him. Mr. Madison devoted himself particularly to the task of answering and replying to the objections of Patrick Henry, following him step by step, and meeting him at every turn. His principal coadjutors were Governor Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, the President of the Convention, John Marshall, George Nicholas, and Henry Lee of Westmoreland. Never was there assembled in Virginia a body of men, of more surpassing talent, of bolder energy, or of purer integrity than in that Convention. The volume of their debates should be the pocket and the pillow companion of every youthful American aspiring to the honor of rendering important service to his country; and there,

as he reads aud meditates, will he not fail to perceive the steady, unfaltering mind of James Madison, marching from victory to victory, over the dazzling but then beclouded genius and eloquence of Patrick Henry. The result was the unconditional ratification by a majority of only eight votes, of the Constitution of the United States on the part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, together with resolutions, recommending sundry amendments to supply the omission of a Bill of Rights. The example for this had been first set by the Convention of Massachusetts, at the motion of John Hancock, and it was followed by several other of the State Conventions, and gave occasion to the first ten Articles, amendatory of the Constitution prepared by the first Congress of the United States and ratified by the competent number of the State Legislatures, and which supply the place of a Bill of Rights.

In the organization of the Government of the United States, Washington, the leader of the armies of the revolution, the President of the Convention which had prepared the Constitution for the acceptance of the People-first in War, first in Peace, and first in the hearts of his Countrymen, was by their unanimous voice called to the first Presidency of the United States. For his assistance in the performance of the functions of the Executive power, after the institution by Congress of the chief Departments, he selected Alexander Hamilton for the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and Thomas Jefferson for that of Secreta

ry of State. Mr. Madison was elected one of the members of the House of Representatives in the first Congress of the United States under the Constitution.

The Treasury itself was to be organized. Public credit, prostrated by the impotence of the Confederation, was to be restored, provision was to be made for the punctual payment of the public debt-taxes were to be levied the manufactures, commerce and navigation of the Country were to be fostered and encouraged; and a system of conduct towards foreign powers was to be adopted and maintained. A Judiciary system was also to be instituted, accommodated to the new and extraordinary character of the general Government. A permanent seat of Government was to be selected and subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; and the definite action of each of the Departments of the Government was to be settled and adjusted. In the councils of President Washington, divisions of opinion between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton soon widened into collisions of principle and produced mutual personal estrangement and irritation. In the formation of a general system of policy for the conduct of the Administration in National concerns at home and abroad, different views were taken by Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton, which Washington labored much, but with little success, to conciliate. Hamilton, charged by successive calls from the House of Representatives, for reports of plans for the restoration of public credit; upon the protection and encouragement of Manufac

tures, and upon a National Mint and Bank, transmitted upon each of those subjects reports of consummate ability, and proposed plans most of which were adopted by Congress almost without alteration. The Secretary of State during the same period made reports to Congress, not less celebrated, on the Fisheries, on the system of commercial regulations most proper to be established, and upon weights and measures. Negotiations with foreign powers, which the inefficiency of the confederation had left in a lamentable and languishing condition, humiliating to the national honor and reputation, were resumed and reinstituted, and by long and complicated correspondences with the Governments of Great Britain, Spain and France, the National character was in the first term of the administration of Washington redeemed and exhibited to the world with a splendor never surpassed, and which gave to the tone of our national intercourse with the Sovereigns of the earth a dignity, a firmness, a candor and moderation, which shamed the blustering and trickish diplomacy of Europe at that day and shed a beam of unfading glory upon the name of republican America. But the National Constitution had not only operated as if by enchantment a most auspicious revolution in the character and reputation of the newly independent American People; it had opened new avenues to honor and power and fame, and new prospects to individual ambition.

No sooner was the new Government organized than the eyes, the expectations and the interests and pas

sions of men turned to the designation of the succession to the Presidency, when the official term of Washington should be completed. His own intention was to retire at the expiration of the first four years allotted to the service. The candidates of the North and South, supported by the geographical sympathies of their respective friends, were already giving rise to the agency of political combinations. The Northern candidate was not yet distinctly designated, but before the expiration of the first Congress, Mr. Jefferson was the only intended candidate of the South.

The Protection of Manufactures, the restoration of public credit, the recovery of the securities of the public debt from a state of depreciation little short of total debasement, and the facilities of exchange and of circulation furnished by the establishment of a National Bank, were of far deeper interest to the commercial and Atlantic than to the plantation States. Mr. Jefferson's distrust and jealousy of the powers granted by the Constitution followed him into office, and were perhaps sharpened by the successful exercise of them, under the auspices of a rival statesman; he insisted upon a rigid construction of all the grants of power-he denied the Constitutional power of Congress to establish Corporations, and especially a National Bank. The question was discussed in the Cabinet Council of Washington, and written opinions of Mr. Jefferson and of Edmund Randolph, then Attorney General, against the Constitutional power of Congress to establish a Bank, were given. With