Without any unnecessary waste of time, he appears to have taken a rapid survey of the general subject, and of the peculiar plan of operations⁠—developed in the earlier numbers of their essays⁠—which the able leaders of the States’-Rights, or anti-constitutional party in New York had adopted, in their well-digested opposition to “the new system,” and he resolved to employ the same potential agency which they had employed⁠— the newspaper press

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 Federal 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 oversupply 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 Federal system, and to his proposed appeal in behalf of “the new Constitution.”

A plan of operations which was so well adapted to produce confusion in the ranks of those who opposed “the new system,” and to shake the confidence which the people of the State of New York had reposed in the arguments of its leaders, needed only a careful elaboration of its details, and a prompt and energetic execution of its different parts, to insure some degree of success. To secure these, Colonel Hamilton appears to have sought the assistance of those whose peculiar qualifications adapted them to the discharge of peculiar lines of duty, reserving to himself, however, not only the general control of the discussion, but the execution of those portions of it which appear to have been attended with the greatest difficulties. The Secretary of the United States for Foreign Affairs ( Mr.

Jay), notwithstanding the lukewarmness of his sympathy, was induced to undertake those portions of the discussion which related to the importance of the Union in connection with the foreign relations of the States, and to the treaty-making authority of the Senate⁠—both of them being subjects which his official position enabled him to discuss with unusual ability, without compromising in the least his general political sentiments, and without obliging him, necessarily, to assent, even by implication, to any portion of the proposed Constitution. Mr.