He stood for a class of men who would not have been surprised at a failure of the attempt at popular government. Such men as these formed the core of the Federal party. Among them were not a few who were more than doubtful of the Republic. Hamilton declared that the most appropriate name for the new nation would be "a a Federal Monarchy." In March, 1798, King, of New York, and Cabot, of Massachusetts, did not hesitate to say that if the appropriation bills failed to pass they would "throw up the game." Dexter was an avowed believer that the presidency must be changed to the life tenure. Hamilton seems never to have hesitated to repeat his lack of faith in the Constitution and the government. In 1791, he said: "I own it is my opinion, though I do not publish it from Dan to Beersheba, that the present government is not that which will answer the end of society, and that it will be found expedient to go into the British form." But he did publish these opinions farther than from Dan to Beersheba. Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson, among the great leaders of the hour, seemed to be alone in their entire faith in popular government. Washington, with superb poise of character, stood between sections and between factions. "Washington," says Jefferson in a letter to Martin Van Buren, " was sincerely a friend to the republican principle of our Constitution. His faith, perhaps, might not have been as confident as mine, but he repeatedly declared to me that he was determined the Constitution should have a fair chance for success, and that he would lose the last drop of his blood in its support, against any attempt which might be made to change its republican form."

The peculiar character of the French Revolution, with its atrocious development of brutality, added

greatly to the difficulty of the situation in America. The parallel was too close. Both nations labored in the name of human freedom. Both professed to be demonstrations of popular government. The enemies of republicanism had only to cry out Jacobin to create prejudice. The doubters feared that the American people also would drift into excesses. The Whiskey Rebellion added counsel to timidity. A few wished themselves safely back under the English Constitution. An illustration of the influence of the French Revolution was happily touched off by an eminent Virginian with these parallel epitaphs:

Beneath this stupendous pile,
Reared by the hands of mil-

lions,
A

Monster lies,

Of millions once the dread

and pest,

Of Tyranny

The parent and the child;

Of Slavery

The offspring and the nurse;
Of mad Ambition
The pamper'd minion;

Of Liberty

The scourge and victim.

A
Hypogriff

In form was not more terrible;

A harpy

Not more vile, rapacious,

Or

Insatiate.

The shores of fertile Nile,

Nor all the fields
Of harvest-waving Sicily

Beneath this horrid pile,
Raised by the hands
Of

Democratic rage
And

Maniac fury,

A consecrated victim
Lies;

Of scepter's royalty
The
Holy progeny;
Hyperion's form
Was not more fair,
More luminous,
Or
Majestic.

Of thrones

The brightest ornament

And
Bulwark;
Of

Order, honour, loyalty,
And
Chivalry

The sacred archetype;

It is impossible to overestimate the uncertain footing. of the new government. From 1788 to 1800 was a purely experimental era. Washington said with pathos, "Every step I take is on new ground." There was no precedent in history for such a Federal Union of Independent States. What could be suggested by the Achæan and Hanseatic Leagues was rather misleading than helpful. Had the events of the first ten years of national life been foreseen, it is certain that Virginia and New York, with North Carolina, and probably Pennsylvania, would not have ratified the Constitution. It is equally certain that could New England have looked far enough ahead to have seen the events of the ten years following 1800, it would never have entered the Union.

Nullification had been the rule under the Confederacy. Each State decided for itself whether to respond to Congress. Under the new Union this habit was not easily forsaken. The Empire State was still imperial in spirit and tone, and by itself entered on a system of internal improvement that would have staggered the general government. Massachusetts seemed to Governor Hancock fully as sovereign as ever. Washington found it necessary to make a tour of the States, partly that the people might be accustomed to conceive of a national government as a visible fact. In Boston, the governor insisted that he must himself receive the first visit of state. Washington did not yield the point. When Hancock found the President was about to leave the city, he realized that the game was up; and having had himself swathed in flannels, he was carried on the shoulders of four men to pay the respects of Massachusetts to the general government. It was a ludicrous but not an unimportant matter. The excuse of illness

was sufficient, so long as the State did not establish its sovereignty over the Union. Hancock illustrated State jealousy still more markedly by sending a special message to the Massachusetts legislature, protesting against the right of Congress to require him as governor to certify to the electoral lists made out after a Presidential election.

The

The effort of eleven States to break loose from the Union in 1860-61 was not an episode dependent on a novel reading of Constitutional rights, nor was it solely a consequence of the desire to perpetuate a social system based on slavery. It is a very partial and a very partisan reading of American history that fails to see that from the acceptance of the Constitution in 1790, there has been a tendency to assert the right of States to nullify national enactments or even to sever their relations to the Union. This has been a shifting sentiment; asserted now at the South and then at the North. Overt acts have been six in number. first of these occurred in 1798, and in Virginia and Kentucky took the shape of Nullification Resolutions. The second was the effort of New England, in 1803, to create a Northern Confederacy, consisting of five New England States with New York and New Jersey. The third was the desperate effort of Vice-President Burr to create a cleavage in the Southwest, including the Mississippi Valley, and, hopefully, Ohio. fourth in the disagreeable list was the practical withdrawal of the New England States from co-operation in the war of 1812-14; ending in a Convention of those States to formulate sectional autonomy. The fifth act was in the form of nullification, and was confined to South Carolina. The sixth and final act was that of 1861, when eleven States withdrew their representa

The