was in the mew, passing from Confederation to Union, how bitter was the schism between the Feds and Antis.  Here you and I were together again.  For although, for a moment, separated by the Atlantic from the scene of action, I favored the opinion that nine States should confirm the constitution, in order to secure it, and the others hold off, until certain amendments, deemed favorable to freedom, should be made.  I rallied in the first instant to the wiser proposition of Massachusetts, that all should confirm, and then all instruct their delegates to urge those amendments.  The amendments were made, and all were reconciled to the government.  But as soon as it was put into motion, the line of division was again drawn.  We broke into two parties, each wishing to give the government a different direction; the one to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the more permanent branches, and to extend their permanence.  Here you and I separated for the first time:  and as we had been longer than most others on the public theatre, and our names therefore were more familiar to our countrymen, the party which considered you as thinking with them, placed your name at their head; the other, for the same reason, selected mine.  But neither decency nor inclination permitted us to become the advocates of ourselves, or to take part personally in the violent contests which followed.  We suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be passive subjects of public discussion.  And these discussions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been exceeded.  All the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions; one was upbraided with receiving the anti-federalists, the other the old tories and refugees, into their bosom.  Of this acrimony, the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony, in the debates of Congress, of State legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays; and to these, without question, may be added the private correspondences of individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the respect due to that, but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings.  In this way and in answers to addresses, you and I could indulge ourselves.  We have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth.  I have not examined my letters of that day.  I have no stomach to revive the memory of its feelings.  But one of these letters, it seems, has got before the public, by accident and infidelity, by the death of one friend to whom it was written, and of his friend to whom it had been communicated, and by the malice and treachery of a third person, of whom I had never before heard, merely to make mischief, and in the same