Madison, who had not a grain of humour, replied gravely, his rich southern brogue seeming to roll his words down from a height:  “I have a modest hope in the address I prepared for the citizens of Rhode Island, more in Hamilton’s really magnificent letter to the Governor.  Nothing can be more forcible—­nay, beguiling—­than his argument in that letter in favour of a general government independent of state machinery, and his elaborate appeal to that irritating little commonwealth to consent to the levying of the impost by Congress, necessary to the raising of the moneys.  I fear I am not a hero, for I confess I tremble.  I fear the worst.  But at all events I am determined to place on record that I left no stone unturned to save this miserable country.”

“You will go down to posterity as a great man, Madison, if you are never given the chance to be one,” replied the father of American humour and coinage; “for it is not in words but in acts that we display the faith that is not in us.  Well, Hamilton?”

“I must confess,” said Hamilton, “that Congress appears to me, as a newcomer, rooted contentedly to its chairs, and determined to do nothing, happy in the belief that Providence has the matter in hand and but bides the right moment to make the whole world over.  But I see no cause to despair, else I should not have come to waste my time.  I fear that Rhode Island is too fossilized to listen to us, but I shall urge that we change the principle of the Confederation and vote to make the States contribute to the general treasury in an equal proportion to their means, by a system of general taxation imposed under continental authority.  If the poorer States, irrespective of land and numbers, could be relieved, and the wealthier taxed specifically on land and houses, the whole regulated by continental legislation, I think that even Rhode Island might be placated.  It may be that this is not agreeable to the spirit of the times, but I shall make the attempt—­”

“Considering there is no spirit in the times, we might as well expect to inform its skull with genius by means of a lighted candle.  You think too well of human nature, my boy; expect nothing, that ye be not disappointed, especially in the matter of revenue.”

“I have no exalted opinion of human nature, but if I did not think more hopefully of it than you do, I should yield up that enthusiasm without which I can accomplish nothing.  You have every gift, but you will end as a dilettante because your ideal is always in the mud; and it is only now and again that you think it worth while to pick it up and give it a bath.”

“Right, right,” murmured Morris, good-naturedly.  “Would that I had your unquenchable belief in the worth while.  Allied to your abilities it will make the new world over and upset the wicked plans of the old.  Analyst and disbeliever in man’s right to his exaggerated opinion of himself, how do you keep enthusiasm abreast with knowledge of human kind?  Tell me, Hamilton, how do you do it?”