then existed, to avoid the charge which had been brought against the friends of the proposed Constitution, of a latent desire to dissolve that Union and to consolidate the thirteen Peoples of which it was constituted into one Nation, under a single Government, by a bold and unequivocal defence of that Union, per se, and by a countercharge on his opponents, of the existence among them of a secret purpose to dissolve that Union, and to establish in its stead two or more "petty confederacies." It is evident, also, that he resolved to appeal to the cupidity of the commercial classes—with whose well-known tendency to conservatism, at all times, he was well acquainted—by assuming that the immediate adoption of the proposed Constitution, without amendment, by the State of New York, was necessary in order to preserve the Union from disruption, and the State from anarchy, if not from dismemberment and annihilation; that a peremptory rejection of it by the State of New York, or a prolonged delay in ratifying it, which would be necessary if a previous revision of the instrument should be demanded by that State, would be productive of the most serious evils, both to the State and to the Union; and that the derangement of the Fœderal finances was the legitimate result of a radical defect in the Articles of Confederation; while the apparent stagnation of trade,—the necessary consequence of an over-supply of goods and of an undue proportion of vendors when compared with the aggregate of the population,—by being magnified to such an extent, and presented in such a manner, as to make them appear as the necessary results of a defective form of Government, he hoped, might also afford him great assistance as an introduction both to his projected condemnation of the existing Fœderal system, and to his proposed appeal in behalf of "the new Constitution."
A plan of operations which was so well adapted to
