If the anti-Federalists had entertained the idea of an immediate and indefinite adjournment, they appear to have abandoned it without waste of time; perhaps because long and tedious journeys in midsummer were not to be played with; perhaps because they were sure of their strength; possibly because Clinton was so strongly in favour of arranging Hamilton’s destinies once for all.

Certainly at the outset the prospects of the Federalists were almost ludicrous.  The anti-Federalists were two-thirds against one-third, fortified against argument, uncompromisingly opposed to union at the expense of State sovereignty, clever and thinking men, most of them, devoted to Clinton, and admirably led by an orator who acknowledged no rival but Hamilton.  The latter set his lips more than once, and his heart sank, but only to leap a moment later with delight in the mere test of strength.

Clinton’s first move was to attempt a vote at once upon the Constitution as a whole, but he was beaten by Hamilton and many in his own ranks, who were in favour of the fair play of free debate.  The Governor was forced to permit the Convention to go into a Committee of the Whole, which would argue the Constitution section by section.  Hamilton had gained a great point, and he soon revealed the use he purposed to make of it.

It is doubtful if his own followers had anticipated that he would speak almost daily for three weeks, receiving and repelling the brunt of every argument; and certainly Clinton had looked for no such feat.

The contest opened on the Clintonian side, with the argument that an amended Confederation was all that was necessary for the purposes of a more general welfare.  The plan advanced was that Congress should be given the power to compel by force the payment of the requisitions which the States so often ignored.  Hamilton demolished this proposition with one of his most scornful outbursts.

Coerce the States! [he cried].  Never was a madder project devised!  Do you imagine that the result of the failure of one State to comply would be confined to that State alone?  Are you so willing to hazard a civil war?  Consider the refusal of Massachusetts, the attempt at compulsion by Congress.  What a series of pictures does this conjure up?  A powerful State procuring immediate assistance from other States, particularly from some delinquent!  A complying State at war with a non-complying State!  Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another!  This State collecting auxiliaries and forming perhaps a majority against its Federal head!  And can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?—­a government that can exist only by the sword?  And what sort of a State would it be which would suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another? ...  A Federal standing army, then, must enforce the requisitions or the Federal