first order of mind and character have, while living, received the most unequivocal proofs of feeling directly from the popular heart, while the sum total of their lives appears in history to be wanting in evidences of that personal success which is attained in a constant triumph over opponents. Such an expression of popular gratitude and sympathy it was now the fortune of Hamilton to receive.

The people of the city did not stop to consider, on this occasion, whether he was entitled, in comparison with all the other public men in the United States, to be regarded as the chief author of the blessings which they now anticipated from the Constitution. And why should they? He was their fellow-citizen-their own. They remembered the day when they saw him, a mere boy, training his artillerymen in their public park for the coming battles of the Revolution. They remembered the youthful eloquence and the more than youthful power with which he encountered the pestilent and slavish doctrines of their tories. They thought of his career in the army, when the extraordinary maturity, depth, and vigor of his genius, and his great accomplishments, supplied to Washington, in some of the most trying periods of his vast and prolonged responsibility, the assistance that Washington most needed. They recollected his career in Congress, when his comprehensive intellect was always alert, to bear the country forward to measures and ideas that would concentrate its powers and resources in some national system. They called to mind how he had kept their own state from wandering quite away into the paths of disunion-how he had enlightened, invigorated, and purified public opinion by his wise and energetic counsels-how he had led them to understand the true happiness and glory of their country-how he had labored to bring about those events which had now produced the Constitution-how he had shown to them the harmony and success that might be predicted of its operation, and had taught them to accept what was good, without petulantly demanding what individual opinion might claim as perfect.

What was it to them, therefore, on this day of public rejoicing, that there might be in his policy more of consolidation than in the policy of others—that he was said to have in his politics too much that was national and too little that was local-that some had done as much as he in the actual construction of the system which they were now to celebrate? Such controversies might be for

history, or for the contests of administration that were soon to arise. On this day they were driven out of men's thoughts by the glow of that public enthusiasm which banishes the spirit of party, and touches and opens the inmost fountains of patriotism. Hamilton had rendered a series of great services to his country, which had culminated in the adoption of the Constitution by the state of New York; and they were now acknowledged from the very hearts of those who best knew his motives and best understood his character.

The people themselves, divided into their respective trades, evidently undertook the demonstrations in his honor, and gave them an emphasis which they could have derived from no other source. They bore his image aloft upon banners. They placed the Constitution in his right hand, and the Confederation in his left. They depicted Fame, with her trumpet, crowning him with laurels. They emblazoned his name upon the miniature frigate, the federal ship of state. They anticipated the administration of the first president, by uniting on the national flag the figure of Washington and the figure of Hamilton.' All that ingenuity, all that affection, that popular pride and gratitude could do, to honor a public benefactor, was repeated again and again through the long line of five thousand citizens, of all orders and conditions, which stretched away from the shores of that beautiful bay where ocean ascends into river and river is lost in ocean-where Commerce then wore her holiday attire, to prefigure the magnificence and power which she was to derive from the Constitution of the United States.

1 Some of the most elaborate of these devices were borne by the "Block and Pump Makers" and the "Tallow-Chandlers."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

ACTION OF NORTH CAROLINA AND RHODE ISLAND.

THUS had eleven states, at the end of July, 1788, unconditionally adopted the Constitution; five of them proposing amendments for the consideration of the first Congress that would assemble under it, and one of the five calling for a second general convention to act upon the amendments desired. Two other states, however, North Carolina and Rhode Island, still remained aloof.

The legislature of North Carolina, in December, 1787, had ordered a state convention, which assembled July 21, 1788, five days before the convention of New York ratified the Constitution. In this body the Anti-Federalists obtained a large majority. They permitted the whole subject to be debated until the 2d of August; still it had been manifest from the first that they would not allow of an unconditional ratification. They knew what had been the result in New Hampshire and Virginia; but the decision of New York had, of course, not reached them. Their determination was not, however, to be affected by the certainty that the new government would be organized. Their purpose was not to enter the new Union until the amendments which they desired had been obtained. They assumed that the Congress of the Confederation would not provide for the organization of the new government until another general convention had been held; or, if they did, that such a convention would be called by the new Congress; and it appeared to them to be the most effectual mode of bringing about one or the other of these courses to remain for the present in an independent position. The inconvenience and hazard attending such a position do not seem to have had much weight with them, when compared with what they regarded as the danger of an unconditional assent to the Constitution as it then stood.

The Federalists contended strenuously for the course pursued by the other states which had proposed amendments, but they

were overpowered by great numbers, and the convention was dissolved, after adopting a resolution declaring that a bill of rights, and certain amendments, ought to be laid before Congress and the convention that might be called for amending the Constitution, previous to its ratification by the state of North Carolina.' But in order, if possible, to place the state in a position to accede to the Constitution at some future time, and to participate fully in its benefits, they also declared that, having thought proper neither to ratify nor to reject it, and as the new Congress would probably lay an impost on goods imported into the states which had adopted it, they recommended the legislature of North Carolina to lay a similar impost on goods imported into the state, and to appropriate the money arising from it to the use of Congress.

The elements which formed the opposition to the Constitution in other states received in Rhode Island an intense development and aggravation from the peculiar spirit of the people and from certain local causes, the history of which has never been fully written, and is now only to be gathered from scattered sources. Constitutional government was exposed to great perils in that day, throughout the country, in consequence of the false notions of state sovereignty and of public liberty which prevailed everywhere. But it seemed as if all these causes of opposition and distrust had centred in Rhode Island, and had there found a theatre on which to exhibit themselves in their worst form. Fortunately this theatre was so small and peculiar as to make the display of these ideas extremely conspicuous.

The colony of Rhode Island was established upon the broadest principles of religious and civil freedom. Its early founders and rulers, flying from religious persecution in the other New England colonies, had transmitted to their descendants a natural jealousy of other communities, and a high spirit of individual and public independence. In the progress of time, as not infrequently happens in such communities, the principles on which the state was founded were falsely interpreted and applied, until, in the minds of a large part of the people, they had come to mean a simple

1 This resolution was adopted August 2d, 1788, by 184 yeas to 84 nays. North Carolina Debates, Elliot, IV. 250, 251.

2 North Carolina Debates, Elliot, IV. 250, 251.

aversion to all but the most democratic form of government. No successful appeal to this hereditary feeling could be made during the early part of the Revolution, against the interests and influence of the Confederacy, because the early and local effect of the Revolution in fact coincided with it. But when the Revolution was fairly accomplished, and the state had assumed its position of absolute sovereignty, what may be called the extreme individualism of the people, and their old unfortunate relations with the rest of New England, made them singularly reluctant to part with any power to the confederated states. The manifestations of this feeling we have seen all along, from the first establishment of the Confederation down to the period at which we are now arrived.

The local causes which gave to this tendency its utmost activity, at the time of the formation of the Constitution of the United States, were the following:

First, there had existed in the state, for a considerable period, a despotic and well-organized party, known as the paper-money party. This faction had long controlled the legislation of the state by furnishing the agricultural classes, in the shape of paper money, with the only circulating medium they had ever had in any large quantity; and they were determined to extinguish the debt of the state by this species of currency, which the legislature could, and did, depreciate at pleasure.

Secondly, there existed, to a great and ludicrous extent, a constant antagonism between town and country-between the agricultural and the mercantile or trading classes; and this hostility was especially violent and active between the people of the towns of Providence and Newport and the people of the surrounding and the more remote rural districts.' The paper-money question divided the inhabitants of the state in the same way. The loss of this circulation would deprive the agricultural classes of their

'The march of the country people upon Providence, on the 4th of July, 1788, and the manner in which they compelled the inhabitants of the town to abandon their purpose of celebrating the adoption of the Constitution by nine statesdictating even their toasts and salutes - reads more like a page in Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York than like anything else. But it is a veracious as well as a most amusing story. See Staples's Annals of Providence, pp. 329-335.