too extreme, and in place of it a plan of conditional amendments was brought forward, by which the state could later withdraw from the Union. Rather than risk further contest, this compromise was at first favorably received by the Federalists; the one side hoping that the new government would prove so great a failure or so hard a master that a favorable opportunity would come for rescinding the ratification, while the other foresaw that, a ratification once obtained, there would be little to "fear in the future." But while this compromise was still in embryo news reached the convention that both New Hampshire and Virginia had ratified the constitution, making ten states in all, and insuring the organization and trial of the new government. The Federalists therefore became less yielding and finally wrung from their opponents an unconditional ratification. What the arguments of " Publius " could not bring to pass had been extorted from the majority of the state by the majority of the states and a minority of its own citizens.
But if The Federalist was an uninfluential factor in the actual struggle for ratification, it was because of the nature of the contest, and not from want of ability. It is true that serious defects, due to the circumstances of its production, are obvious. Although intended to be a systematic work on republican government, it was even more a plea for the adoption of this particular constitution, and therefore had quite as much of the legal brief as of the philosophical commentary on government. Not one of the authors of The Federalist entirely approved of the constitution, but none the less they were called upon to defend it in toto. "In some parts," wrote Jefferson, immediately after its publication, "it is discoverable that the author means only to say what may be best said in defense of the opinions in which he did not concur,"[1] proving that some of the arguments were so half-
- ↑ Though carried on in concert, the writers were not mutually responsible for all the ideas of each other; there being seldom time for even a perusal of the pieces by any but the writer, before they were wanted at the press, and sometimes hardly by the writer himself." — Madison to Jefferson, August l0, 1788.
