In the discussion of the great question which attracted the attention of the people of the State of New York, at the period referred to, Mr. Jay’s inclination does not appear to have led him to take any part whatever, nor does the people appear to have looked to him for either counsel or personal leadership. His well-known and freely acknowledged preference for a complete centralization of all political power—even to the extent of dissolving the political and constituent powers of the several states, of reducing them to the grade of counties, and of making them entirely dependent, even for their nominal existence and for their local officers, on the will of a consolidated, national government—having received no favorable consideration in the Federal Convention, he had found little in the proposed Constitution which he could commend, and nothing for which he could labor.
The responsibility, therefore, as well as the greater portion of the labor, which attended the organization of the friends of the new Constitution—scattered throughout the state, the direction of their feeble efforts, and the general conduct of the struggle in this, the principal battlefield for “the new system,” necessarily devolved on Alexander Hamilton—a gentleman whose record was