AND THE FEDERALIST PARTY 123 



adaptability. It also illustrates one characteristic of 

 his style. Had he been endowed with a gorgeous 

 poetical imagination like Burke, or had he been a 

 master of rhetoric in the same sense as Webster, there 

 could never have been any difficulty in distinguishing 

 between his writing and Madison's. But Hamilton's 

 style was a direct appeal to man's reason ; and the 

 wonder of it was that he could accomplish by such a 

 direct appeal what most men cannot accomplish with- 

 out calling into play the various arts of the rhetorician. 

 To make a bare statement of facts and conclusions in 

 such a way that unwilling minds cannot choose but 

 accept them is a rare gift indeed. But while this was 

 Hamilton's secret, it was to some extent Madison's 

 also. Though a much less brilliant man in many 

 ways, in this one respect Madison approached Hamil- 

 ton, though he did not quite equal him. Hence, as it 

 seems to me, the general similarity of style through- 

 out the disputed numbers of the " Federalist." 



As the speeches in Xenophon's " Anabasis " give one 

 a very brief opinion of the intelligence of the Greek 

 soldiers to whom such arguments might even be sup- 

 posed to be addressed, so the essays in the " Federalist" 

 give one a very high opinion of the intelligence of our 

 great-grandfathers. The American people have never 

 received a higher compliment than in having had such 

 a book addressed to them. That they deserved it was 

 shown by the effect produced, and it is in this dem- 

 ocratic appeal to the general intelligence that we get 

 the pleasantest impression of Hamilton's power. 



The most remarkable exhibition of it, however, was 

 in the state convention at Poughkeepsie, in June and 

 July, 1788, for considering the question as to ratifying 



