treasury will be left without supplies, and the government without support....  There is but one cure for such an evil—­to enable the national laws to operate on individuals like the laws of the States.  To take the old Confederation as the basis of a new system, and to trust the sword and the purse to a single assembly organized upon principles so defective, giving it the full powers of taxation and the national forces, would result in what—­Despotism!  To avoid the very issue which appears to be held in such abject terror, a totally different government from anything into which the old Confederation can be twisted, or fitted out with wings and gables, must be established with proper powers and proper checks and balances.

His words created a palpable uneasiness.  The outburst was the more effective for following and preceding close passionless and pointed reasoning, a trenchant review of other republics ancient and modern, and an elaborate argument in favour of the representation prescribed by the new Constitution.

Hamilton was not only the most brilliant, resourceful, and unanswerable orator of his time, but he was gifted with an almost diabolical power over the emotions of men, which he did not hesitate to use.  At this momentous assembly he kept them in exercise; when he chose, he made his audience weep; and the Clintonians weakened daily.  Had not many years of trouble and anxiety made their emotions peculiarly susceptible, Hamilton would have attempted their agitation more sparingly; and had he been theatrical and rhetorical in his methods, he would have lost his control of them long before the end of the session.  But he rarely indulged in a trope or a flight, never in bathos nor in bursts of ill-balanced appeal.  Nothing ever was drier than the subjects he elucidated day after day for three weeks:  for he took the Constitution to pieces bit by bit, and compelled them to listen to an analysis which, if propounded by another, would have bored them to distraction, vitally interested as they were.  But he not only so illuminated the cold pages of the Constitution that while they listened they were willing to swear it was more beautiful than the Bible, but the torrent of his eloquence, never confusing, so sharp was every feature of the Constitution to his own mind, the magic of his personality, and his intense humanity in treating the driest sections of the document, so bewitched his audience that, even when he talked for six hours without pausing on the subject of taxation, perhaps the baldest topic which the human understanding is obliged to consider, there was not a sign of impatience in the ranks of the enemy.

He by no means harrowed them daily; he was far too astute for that.  There were days together when he merely charmed them, and they sat with a warm unconscious smile while he demolished bit by bit one of Melancthon Smith’s clever arguments, in a manner so courteous that even his victim could only shrug his shoulders, although he cursed him roundly afterward.  Then, when his audience least expected an assault, he would treat them to a burst of scorn that made them hitch their chairs and glance uneasily at each other, or to a picture of future misery which reduced them to pulp.