f the Almighty;
never on earth could he have found the courage and the optimism.' No,
Hamilton, I would embrace you, did my wooden leg permit me to escape
your wrath, but I can give you no encouragement. You will fail
here--gloriously, but you will fail. Mark my words, the army will go
home cursing, and scratch the ground to feed its women. The States will
have no peace establishment to threaten their sovereign rights, we will
pay nobody, and become more and more poverty-stricken and contemptible
in our own eyes, and in the eyes of Europe; we will do nothing that is
wise and everything that is foolish--"

"And then, when the country is sick unto death," interrupted Hamilton,
"it will awake to the wisdom of the drastic remedy and cohere into a
nation."

"Query," said Madison, "would it not be patriotic to push things from
bad to worse as quickly as possible? It might be a case of justifiable
Jesuitism."

"And it might lead to anarchy and the jaws of Europe," said Hamilton.
"It is never safe to go beyond a certain point in the management of
human affairs. What turn the passions of the people may take can never
be foretold, nor that element of the unknown, which is always under the
invisible cap and close on one's heels. God knows I have not much
patience in my nature, and I do not believe that most of my schemes are
so far in advance of even this country's development; but certain
lessons must be instilled by slow persistence. I have no faith in
rushing people at the point of the bayonet in times of peace."

"I think you are right there," said Morris. "But mark my words, you'll
propagate ideas here, and the result in time will be the birth of a
nation--no doubt of that; but you must rest content to live on hope for
the present. I was a fettered limb in this body too long. I know its
inertia."

He knew whereof he spoke. Hamilton won little but additional reputation,
much admiration, half resentful, and many enemies. The army went home
unpaid; the peace establishment consisted of eighty men; little or
nothing was done to relieve the national debt or to carry on the
business of government. Even his proposition to admit the public to the
galleries of Congress, in the hope of interesting it in governmental
affairs, only drew upon him the sneer that he could go out on the
balcony and make his speeches if he feared his eloquence was wasted. He
was accused of writing the Newburg address inciting the officers to
civil war,