THE CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMAN 207 



proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution, in 

 order to meet the objection, urged in many quarters, 

 that that instrument did not contain a bill of rights. 

 The first ten of these amendments were adopted, and 

 became part of the Constitution in 1791. 



The first division of political parties under the Con- 

 stitution began to show itself in the debates upon 

 Hamilton's financial measures as Secretary of the 

 Treasury, and in this division we see Madison acting 

 as leader of the opposition. By many writers this 

 has been regarded as indicating a radical change of 

 attitude on his part, and sundry explanations have 

 been offered to account for the presumed inconsist- 

 ency. He has been supposed to have succumbed to 

 the personal influence of Jefferson, and to have yielded 

 his own convictions to the desires and prejudices of 

 his constituents. Such explanations are hardly borne 

 out by what we know of Madison's career up to this 

 point; and, moreover, they are uncalled for. If we 

 consider carefully the circumstances of the time, the 

 presumed inconsistency in his conduct disappears. 

 The new Republican party, of which he soon became 

 one of the leaders, was something quite different in its 

 attitude from the Anti-federalist party of 1787-1790. 

 There was ample room in it for men who, in those 

 critical years, had been stanch Federalists, and as time 

 passed this came to be more and more the case, until, 

 after a quarter of a century, the entire Federalist party, 

 with the exception of a few inflexible men in New 

 England, had been absorbed by the Republican party. 

 In 1 790, since the federal Constitution had been actually 

 adopted and was going into operation, and since the 

 extent of power that it granted to the general govern- 



