tenth amendment, afterward
adopted.

Finally, in the concluding article of the "Federalist," he bears
emphatic testimony to the same principles, in the remark that "every
Constitution for the United States must inevitably consist of a great
variety of particulars, in which _thirteen independent States_ are to be
accommodated in their interests or opinions of interest.... Hence the
necessity of molding and arranging all the particulars, which are to
compose the whole, in such a manner as to satisfy _all the parties_ to
the compact."[84] There is no intimation here, or anywhere else, of the
existence of any such idea as that of the aggregated people of one great
consolidated state. It is an incidental enunciation of the same truth
soon afterward asserted by Madison in the Virginia Convention--that the
people who ordained and established the Constitution were "not the
people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen
sovereignties".

Mr. Madison, in the Philadelphia Convention, had at first held views of
the sort of government which it was desirable to organize, similar to
those of Mr. Hamilton, though more moderate in extent. He, too, however,
cordially conformed to the modifications in them made by his colleagues,
and was no less zealous and eminent in defending and expounding the
Constitution as finally adopted. His interpretation of its fundamental
principles is so fully shown in the extracts which have already been
given from his contributions to the "Federalist" and speeches in the
Virginia Convention, that it would be superfluous to make any additional
citation from them.

The evidence of Hamilton and Madison--two of the most eminent of the
authors of the Constitution, and the two preeminent contemporary
expounders of its meaning--is the most valuable that could be offered
for its interpretation. That of all the other statesmen of the period
only tends to confirm the same conclusions. The illustrious Washington,
who presided over the Philadelphia Convention, in his correspondence,
repeatedly refers to the proposed Union as a "Confederacy" of States, or
a "confederated Government," and to the several States as "acceding," or
signifying their "accession," to it, in ratifying the Constitution. He
refers to the Constitution itself as "a compact or treaty," and
classifies it among compacts or treaties between "men, bodies of men, or
countries." Writing to Count Rochambeau, on January 8, 1788, h