ow how anxious I am to injure our chances of
success," he said. "I hope all things from your pen."

Jay bowed formally, and Hamilton turned to Madison. "I know you must
feel that you have done your share for the present," he said, "and there
is hard work awaiting you in your State Convention, but the subject is
at your finger tips; it hardly can be too much trouble."

"I am not very well," said Madison, peevishly, "but I realize the
necessity,--and that the papers should be read as extensively in
Virginia as here. I will write a few, and more if I can."

But, as it came to pass, Madison wrote but fourteen separate papers of
the eighty-five, although he collaborated with Hamilton on three others,
and Jay wrote five only. The remaining sixty-three, therefore, of the
essays, collected during and after their publication under the title of
"The Federalist," which not only did so much to enlighten and educate
the public mind and weaken the influence of such men as Clinton, but
which still stand as the ablest exposition of the science of government,
and as the parent of American constitutional law, were the work of
Hamilton.

"It is the fortunate situation of our country," said Hamilton, a few
months later, at Poughkeepsie, "that the minds of the people are
exceedingly enlightened and refined." Certainly these papers are a great
tribute to the general intelligence of the American race of a century
and more ago. Selfish, petty, and lacking in political knowledge they
may have been, but it is evident that their mental _tone_ was high, that
their minds had not been vulgarized by trash and sensationalism.
Hamilton's sole bait was a lucid and engaging style, which would not
puzzle the commonest intelligence, which he hoped might instruct without
weighing heavily on the capacity of his humbler readers. That he was
addressing the general voter, as well as the men of a higher grade as
yet unconvinced, there can be no doubt, for as New York State was still
seven-tenths Clintonian, conversion of a large portion of this scowling
element was essential to the ratification of the Constitution. And yet
he chose two men of austere and unimaginative style to collaborate with
him; while his own style for purity, distinction, and profundity
combined with simplicity, has never been excelled.

Betsey was ailing, and her doors closed to society; the children romped
on the third floor or on the Battery. Hamilton wrote chiefly at night,
his prac