h federal
officials; establishing a full independent federal judiciary, resident
in every State, with a supreme court above all; imposing a tariff for
revenue and for protection to American industries, and appropriating
money to settle the debts of the late confederation. In addition, it
framed and submitted to the States a series of constitutional
amendments whose object was to meet Anti-federalist criticisms by
securing the individual against oppression from the federal government.
When Congress adjourned in September, 1789, after its first session, it
had completed a thoroughgoing political revolution. In place of a
loose league of entirely independent States, there now existed a
genuine national government, able to enforce its will upon individuals
and to perform all the functions of any State.

That the American people, with their political inheritance, should have
consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax
government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in
history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for
the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to
join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation.
{144} The leaders, as might be expected, were a different race of
statesmen, on the whole, from those who had directed events prior to
1776. Washington and Franklin favoured the change; but Richard Henry
Lee and Patrick Henry were eager opponents, Samuel Adams was
unfriendly, and Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, was unenthusiastic. The
main work was done by Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, Gouverneur
Morris, Fisher Ames--men who were children in the days of the Stamp
Act. The old agitators and revolutionists were superseded by a new
type of politicians, whose interests lay in government, not opposition.

But the fundamental American instincts were not in reality changed;
they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its
second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing
the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished,
and new sectional and class antagonisms came rapidly to the front in
which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The
central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, Secretary of the
Treasury, who aspired to be a second William Pitt, and submitted an
elaborate scheme for refunding the entire American debt.