he must have known that his work was but half done, and with the same pen with which he reiterated his intention to live in repose and privacy, and spend his declining years beneath his own vine and fig-tree, he wrote urgent appeals and wove strong arguments addressed to leaders in every State.  He had not been at home five days before he wrote to the younger Trumbull, congratulating him on his father’s vigorous message in behalf of better federal government, which had not been very well received by the Connecticut legislature.  He spoke of “the jealousies and contracted temper” of the States, but avowed his belief that public sentiment was improving.  “Everything,” he concluded, “my dear Trumbull, will come right at last, as we have often prophesied.  My only fear is that we shall lose a little reputation first.”  A fortnight later he wrote to the governor of Virginia:  “That the prospect before us is, as you justly observe, fair, none can deny; but what use we shall make of it is exceedingly problematical; not but that I believe all things will come right at last, but like a young heir come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin, and then like him shall have to labor with the current of opinion, when compelled, perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy pointed out as plain as any problem in Euclid in the first instance.”  The soundness of the view is only equaled by the accuracy of the prediction.  He might five years later have repeated this sentence, word for word, only altering the tenses, and he would have rehearsed exactly the course of events.

While he wrote thus he keenly watched Congress, and marked its sure and not very gradual decline.  He did what he could to bring about useful measures, and saw them one after the other come to naught.  He urged the impost scheme, and felt that its failure was fatal to the financial welfare of the country, on which so much depended.  He always was striving to do the best with existing conditions, but the hopelessness of every effort soon satisfied him that it was a waste of time and energy.  So he turned again in the midst of his canal schemes to renew his exhortations to leading men in the various States on the need of union as the only true solution of existing troubles.

To James McHenry, of Maryland, he wrote in August, 1785:  “I confess to you candidly that I can foresee no evil greater than disunion; than those unreasonable jealousies which are continually poisoning our minds and filling them with imaginary evils for the prevention of real ones.”  To William Grayson of Virginia, then a member of Congress, he wrote at the same time:  “I have ever been a friend to adequate congressional powers; consequently I wish to see the ninth article of the confederation amended and extended.  Without these powers we cannot support a national character, and must appear contemptible in the eyes of Europe.  But to you,