Clinton. He however again refused, mainly upon the ground of the obligations he was under and the services he owed Congress, and his unwillingness to exchange his present for a more honorable and lucrative position, without the consent and sanction of that body. In a letter addressed to his old friend, General Schuyler, he strongly enforces this view, adding that if real disgust and discontent had spread through the country, and a change had became not only proper but necessary, he would have felt bound to make his personal feelings yield to public considerations.

The necessity of a change in the articles of confederation, and the establishment of a general government, was very early felt. Almost all the public men of America concurred in this opinion. It is scarcely necessary to add that Mr. Jay was among the very first to express his sentiments upon the propriety and necessity of such a change. It is well known, too, that his opinions, from the start, were strongly federal. With Hamilton and Adams he inclined decidedly to centralization, and favored the establishment of an energetic national government. The federal system, as actually

adopted, and especially as it was subsequently construed by Jefferson and Madison, seemed never to have harmonized entirely with his views, or to have met his ideas of a perfect government, though we find him warmly defending the new Constitution as a plan of gov ernment infinitely preferable, in all respects, to the old Confederation. It is not my purpose, however, to point out what might be regarded as the errors of Mr. Jay's theory, or to criticise his speculative opinions on government. Those opinions were shared by some of the wisest, ablest, and may we not add best, of the public men of that day. That they were erroneous is evident from the workings of the admirable system which was subsequently adopted as a sort of compromise between the extreme views of the ultra Federalists on the one hand, and on the other the doctrine of absolute state sovereignty, and the more radical and democratic element of popular government. It is, nevertheless, but doing justice to the most high-toned Federalist of that period to say, that however erroneous may have been his views, and widely as we at this day may differ from these doctrines of consolidation, and a strong central government, yet that these very doctrines, as society then stood, were a

progressive step in the science of government, and even a struggle against a worse and more arbitrary system. At the present day, we are too apt to lose sight of the fact, that the opinions, customs, and habits of the monarchy had not yet lost their hold upon the people. Washington himself, in a letter to Jay, before the meeting of the Convention, uses the following language: "I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to action is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous ! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend." These apprehensions of Washington were shared by Jay, and, it is believed, by most of the prominent Federalists. They honestly and zealously endeavored to avert the threatened evil. The result was, that even the plan of Hamilton, of an executive and Senate for life, was repudiated, and the present Federal Constitution adopted.

Jay was neither a monarchist nor in favor of an aristocratic government. There is no evidence that his sympathies and inclinations were not from the start in favor of pure republican, though not strictly democratic institutions. It is clear, however, that he never gave in his adhesion to the Jeffersonian construction of the Constitution, or thoroughly comprehended what we have been accustomed to regard as the true theory of democratic progress. Thus he says in a letter to General Washington: "The mass of men are neither wise nor good, and the virtue, like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn to a point and exerted by strong circumstances, ably managed, or a strong government, ably administered." So too in regard to the great principle of free suffrage, he hesitated to trust the masses; it was a favorite maxim with him, says his son, in writing his memoirs, that those who own the country (i. e. the land-holders,) should govern it.

The views of Mr. Jay upon the great question of the formation of a national Constitution, were freely expressed in letters to his friends, and show very clearly the force of his convictions in favor of a con

solidated and energetic central government. So early as the spring of 1785, he writes to a friend as follows:

"It is my first wish to see the United States assume and merit the character of ONE GREAT NATION, whose territory is divided into different states merely for more. convenient government, and the more easy and prompt administration of justice; just as our several states are divided into counties and townships for the like purposes.”

The same sentiments are repeated a year after in a letter to John Adams at London, in which he expresses as one of the first wishes of his heart, the desire "to see the people of America become one nation in every respect; for, (he continues,) as to the separate legislatures, I would have them considered, with relation to the confederacy, in the same light in which counties stand to the State of which they are parts, viz., merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government.”

And in a long letter to General Washington, just before the Convention, he intimates the same thing: "What powers should be granted to the Government so constituted," he remarks," is a question which deserves much thought. I think the more the better; the states retaining only so much as may be necessary for domestic purposes, and all their principal officers, civil and military, being commissioned and removable by the national Government." In the same letter Mr. Jay, though expressing himself against a monarchy, goes so far as to suggest a Congress divided into an upper and lower house, the former appointed for life, and the latter annually; and a Governor-General, limited in prerogative and duration. At the same time, however, he never for a moment loses sight of the true basis of popular rights, and the cardinal doctrine of republican government; for his letter closes with the declaration, that no alteration in the government should be made "unless deducible from the only source of just authority-THE PEOPLE."

In like manner the general principle of the Federal union, as subsequently adopted, was already a familiar idea to the mind of Jay, for in a letter to Jefferson, at Paris, alluding to the weakness of the confederacy, and the necessity for a better and a stronger union, he thus sketches the main features of what he conceives to be the true plan which ought to be adopted: "To vest legislative, judicial, and

executive powers in one and the same body of men, and that too in a body daily changing its members, can never be wise. In my opinion those three great departments of sovereignty should be forever separated, and so distributed as to serve as checks on each other."

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These extracts will suffice to show Mr. Jay's opinions upon the subject of the proposed Federal Constitution. It has been before remarked that he was not a member of the Convention which framed it, being prevented from accepting a nomination by the pressing nature of the duties of the office he then held and the necessity of his attending the sittings of Congress. But no sooner was the Constitution agreed upon and submitted to the States for ratification, than Jay stepped forward, its zealous and earnest advocate. Public opinion was divided in regard to it. An active opposition was at once manifested or if not a direct opposition, an earnest and determined effort to secure a larger concession to popular rights and state sovereignty. Perhaps in no State in the union was the opposition more strenuous and determined than in New York. The city, indeed, not then as now the metropolis of the country, but then as now, the loyal and devoted friend of the American union, was decidedly favorable to the proposed plan. But a strong feeling existed in the country in favor of a larger concession of popular rights and a less extensive delegation of power to the General Government. The people were jealous of their liberties, and hesitated to ratify an instrument which called for a surrender of some of the most important powers of State sovereignty. Some were unconditionally and unalterably opposed to the adoption of the proposed instrument; others would adopt it conditionally, and others still, merely desired its amendment in a variety of particulars. The ranks of the antiFederalists comprised all these different shades of opinions, and certainly the power of numbers seemed to be clearly with them. But the weight of the intellect of the State was on the side of the Federalists, and prominent among them stood those distinguished advocates and champions of the proposed Constitution, Livingston, Hamilton, and John Jay.

The first decided impression made by the Federalists upon the people was through the public press. Jay united with Hamilton

and Madison in writing and publishing that celebrated series of papers, which has since been known by the name of the FEDERALIST, the first number of which appeared in the month following the adjournment of the Federal Convention. Three such minds have been rarely combined in the elucidation of any political system, or the discussion of any question, whether practical or theoretical, of politics or government. It is not surprising then that this publication should have impressed itself deeply upon the public mind, and exercised a wide-spread and powerful influence; nor that the Federalist should have been ever since regarded by the American statesman and jurist as the most valuable commentary ever written upon the American Constitution. In this production Jay does not lay claim to an equal share with his illustrious coadjutors. He contributed, it is believed, but five papers, four of which immediately followed the opening number of the series. The remainder is the work of Hamilton and Madison.†

The Federalist was followed by a pamphlet, written by Mr. Jay, but published anonymously, addressed to the people of New York. This pamphlet discussed with great candor as well as ability, the three following questions, with reference to the proposed Constitution.

1. Is it probable a better plan can be obtained?

2. If attainable, is it likely to be in season?

3. What would be our condition, if, rejecting this, all efforts to obtain a better should prove fruitless?

* Chancellor Kent speaks of the Federalist in the following terms: "No Constitution of government ever received a more masterly and successful vindication. I know not indeed of any work on the principles of free government that is to be compared in instruction and intrinsic value to this small and unpretending volume of the Federalist; not even if we resort to Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavel, Montesquieu, Milton, Locke, or Burke. It is equally admirable in the depth of its wisdom, the comprehensiveness of its views, the sagacity of its reflections, and the fearlessness, patrotism, candor, simplicity and elegance with which its truths are uttered and recommended."-1 Kent. Com., p. 241, note.

† Mr. Jay would doubtless have been a larger contributor to the Federalist, but for the occurrence of a serious accident, which interrupted his labors. While endeavoring with other citizens of New York, under the lead of Col. Hamilton, to quell a riot, he was struck with a stone on the temple, and taken up for dead. He recovered only in time to write the sixty-fourth number of the series.