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the people have uniformly manifested a strong attachment to the Union. This attachment has resulted from a persuasion of its utility and necessity. In short, this is a point so well known that it is needless to trespass on your patience any longer about it. A recurrence has been had to history. Ancient and modern leagues have been mentioned, to make impressions. Will they admit of any analogy with our situation? The same principles will produce the same effects. Permit me to take a review of those leagues which the honorable gentleman has mentioned; which are, first, the Amphictyonic Council; second, the Achæan League; third, the Germanic system; fourth, the Swiss cantons; fifth, the United Netherlands; and, sixth, the New England confederacy. Before I develop the principles of these leagues, permit me to speak of what must influence the happiness and duration of leagues. These principles depend on the following circumstances: first, the happy construction of the government of the members of the union; second, the security from foreign danger. For instance, monarchies united would separate soon; aristocracies would preserve their union longer; but democracies, unless separated by some extraordinary circumstance, would last forever. The causes of half the wars that have thinned the ranks of mankind, and depopulated nations, are caprice, folly, and ambition; these belong to the higher orders of governments, where the passions of one, or of a few individuals, direct the fate of the rest of the community. But it is otherwise with democracies, where there is an equality among the citizens, and a foreign and powerful enemy, especially a monarch, may crush weaker neighbors. Let us see how far these positions are supported by the history of these leagues, and how far they apply to us. The Amphicty

onic Council consisted of three members-Sparta, Thebes, and Athens. What was the construction of these States? Sparta was a monarchy more analogous to the Constitution of England than any I have heard of in modern times. Thebes was a democracy, but on different principles from modern democracies. Representation was not known then. This is the acquirement of modern times. Athens, like Thebes, was generally democratic, but sometimes changed. In these two States the people transacted their business in person; consequently, they could not be of any great extent. There was a perpetual variance between the members of this confederacy, and its ultimate dissolution was attributed to this defect. The weakest were obliged to call for foreign aid, and this precipitated the ruin of this confederacy. The Achæan League had more analogy to ours, and gives me great hopes that the apprehensions of gentlemen with respect to our confederacy are groundless. They were all democratic, and firmly united. What was the effect? The most perfect harmony and friendship subsisted among them, and they were very active in guarding their liberties. The history of that confederacy does not present us with those confusions and internal convulsions which gentlemen ascribe to all gov ernments of a confederate kind. The most respectable historians prove this confederacy to have been exempt from these defects. This league was founded on democratical principles, and, from the wisdom of its structure, continued a far greater length of time than any other. Its members, like our States, by their confederation, retained their individual sovereignty and enjoyed perfect equality. What destroyed it? Not internal dissensions. They were surrounded by great and powerful nations

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the Lacedæmonians, Macedonians, and Etolians. The Etolians and Lacedæmonians making war on them, they solicited the assistance of Macedon, who no sooner granted it than she became their possessor. To free themselves from the tyranny of the Macedonians, they prayed succor from the Romans, who, after relieving them from their oppressors, soon totally enslaved them.

The Germanic body is a league of independent principalities. It has no analogy to our system. It is very injudiciously organized. Its members are kept together by the fear of danger from one another, and from foreign powers, and by the influence of the emperor.

The Swiss cantons have been instanced, also, as a proof of the natural imbecility of federal governments. Their league has sustained a variety of changes; and, notwithstanding the many causes that tend to disunite them, they still stand firm. We have not the same causes of disunion or internal variance that they have. The individual cantons composing the league are chiefly aristocratic. What an opportunity does this offer to foreign powers to disturb them by bribing and corrupting their aristocrats! It is well known that their services have been frequently purchased by foreign nations. Their difference of religion has been a source of divisions and animosity among them, and tended to disunite them. This tendency has been considerably increased by the interference of foreign nations, the contiguity of their position to those nations rendering such interference easy. They have been kept together by the fear of those nations, and the nature of their association, the leading features of which are a principle of equality between the cantons, and the retention of individual sover eignty. The same reasoning applies nearly to the United

Netherlands. The other confederacy which has been mentioned has no kind of analogy to our situation.

From a review of these leagues, we find the causes of the misfortunes of those which have been dissolved to have been a dissimilarity of structure in the individual members, the facility of foreign interference, and recurrence to foreign aid. After this review of those leagues, if we consider our comparative situation, we shall find that nothing can be adduced from any of them to warrant a departure from a confederacy to a consolidation, on the principle of inefficacy in the former to secure our happiness. The causes which, with other nations, rendered leagues ineffectual and inadequate to the security and happiness of the people, do not exist here. What is the form of our State governments? They are all similar in their structure-perfectly democratic. The freedom of mankind has found an asylum here which it could find nowhere else. Freedom of conscience is enjoyed here in the fullest degree. Our States are not disturbed by a contrariety of religious opinions and other causes of quarrels which other nations have. They have no causes of internal variance. Causes of war between the States have been represented in all those terrors which splendid genius and brilliant imagination can so well depict. But, sir, I conceive they are imaginary-mere creatures of fancy.

HAMILTON

AMERICAN annals there have been four statesmen, none of whom ever be. came President, yet each of whom is generally acknowledged to have been a greater man than most of those who attained to the Chief Magistracy. The four whom we have in mind were Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. The second of these, Alexander Ham. ilton, was born on the island of Nevis, one of the British Antilles, in 1757. While still a child, he was taken by some of his mother's relatives to the island of St. Croix, and when, in his thirteenth year, he entered the counting-house of Nicholas Kruger in that port, he had received all the benefit that the insular schools were able to impart. Henceforth he was self-educated, until in October, 1772, he left the West Indies for New York. After spending a year at the Grammar School of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, he entered King's (now Columbia) College, in 1774, and, while still a collegian, became the captain of the first company of artillery employed in the Continental service. At the head of his artillerists he took part in the battle of Long Island and in subsequent engagements at Harlem Plains, New Brunswick, Trenton and Princeton. When the Continental Army went into winter quarters at Morristown, in January, 1777, Hamilton became Washington's private secretary, and was raised to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1780 he married a daughter of General Philip Schuyler, a distinguished soldier and statesman of the Revolution. He was present with a command at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. In a series of papers he had exposed the inherent defects of the existing Confederation, and it is now generally acknowledged that the first suggestion toward the establishment of an adequate Federal Government came from him. Although the particular plan proposed by Hamilton in the Federal Convention, which met at Philadephia in 1787, was laid aside, yet it was the spirit of the system conceived by him which then and there prevailed, and has since been a controlling principle in the administration of the Federal Government. Guizot has said of him that "there is not in the Constitution of the United States an element of order, of force and of duration, which he did not powerfully contribute to inject into it and cause to predominate." While it was still uncertain whether the Constitu tion would be adopted by the several State Conventions, Hamilton, in conjunction with James Madison and John Jay, wrote "The Federalist,” to recommend the proposed national organic law as the best obtainable under the circumstances.

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