AND THE FEDERALIST PARTY 121 



might be antagonistic to the policy of the state. The 

 clashing between imperial and local interests might 

 not have been so violent as before the Revolution, but 

 there would have been so much to remind people of 

 the old state of things that the new government would 

 have been discredited from the start. 



It seems clear, then, that in this suggestion Hamil- 

 ton did not show his wonted sagacity. He failed to 

 understand what was really sound and valuable in 

 state rights, and this was not at all strange in a man 

 who, having been born outside of the United States, 

 was at this very moment contending against the ex- 

 treme state sovereignty doctrines of New York and 

 her narrow-minded governor. 



Fortunately, however, there was not the slightest 

 chance of Hamilton's extreme views prevailing in the 

 convention, and this he knew as well as any one. His 

 suggestions, it was said, were praised by everybody, 

 but followed by no one. Presently urgent business 

 called him home, and his two colleagues quit the con- 

 vention in disgust, so that New York was left without 

 representation there. Toward the close he returned 

 to Philadelphia, and when the draft of the federal 

 Constitution was completed, he made an eloquent 

 speech, urging all the delegates to sign it. No man's 

 ideas, he said, could be more remote from the plan 

 than his were known to be ; but was it possible for a 

 true patriot to deliberate between anarchy and civil 

 war, on the one side, and the chance of good to be ex- 

 pected from this plan, on the other? This was the 

 spirit of the true statesman, and in this spirit he signed 

 alone for New York. 



The " Empire State " has had many illustrious citi- 



