Convention was transcending its powers in attempting to construct a new instrument, and went home.

Hamilton, undaunted at being thus left alone to represent so large and important a state, marshaled his marvelous gifts and forces into full play. By the action of the majority of her delegates New York had lost her vote in the Convention, and little dreamed that the boldness, energy, acute sense, and well-balanced intellect of her youthful statesman, was to overbear by eloquence, interpret essential needs by illustration, usurp powers with imperious will, and then convince by argument a large proportion of

her population that he was in the right, and compel in the end a public recognition and justification of his conduct. But such were the facts. He was but thirty, and in size probably the smallest man in the assemblage. Yet in certain respects he was the greatest of them all. He unquestionably evinced more remarkable maturity than was ever exhibited by any other person at so early an age in the same department of thought. His views, although held with great tenacity, were also held in subordination to what was practicable. Franklin opposed every proposition that tended

towards arbitrary government. He thought the Chief Magistrate should have no salary and little power, and that the government should be a simple and ingenious contrivance for executing the will of the people. He said that ambition and avarice, the love of power and the love of money, were the two passions that most influenced the affairs of men, and argued that the struggle for posts of honor which were at the same time places of profit, would perpetually divide the nation and distract its councils; and that the men who would thrust themselves into the arena of contention for preferment would not be the wise and moderate, those fitted for high trusts, but the bold, the selfish and the violent, and that in the bustle of cabal and the mutual abuse of parties the best of characters would be torn in pieces.

Hamilton went to the other extreme. He did not want a monarchy, but he was for having a perpetual senate and a perpetual governor. The great principle he cherished acknowledged the inalienable right of the individual state to control absolutely its own domestic and internal affairs, because better able to do it intelligently than any outside power, but which also recognized the desirability and necessity of a central government that should settle and determine national questions. To embody such a scheme, with all its delicate details and shadings, in a written document, was the puzzle of puzzles. The prudence of Franklin was one of the great influences that ruled the hour. His well-timed anecdotes and quaint observations created many a burst of genuine merriment, despite the serene grandeur and dignity of the presiding power. The day after Hamilton was deserted by his New York colleagues, Franklin, in a characteristic speech, attributed the "small progress made to the melancholy imperfection of the human understanding;" and urgently recommended that the sessions be opened every morning with prayer. The builders were some weeks in hewing their timber after this. All through the hot July and August days the work went on. Washington was a close observer and could give excellent advice, but he was wholly innocent of constructive aptitudes. Madison's far-reaching logic and Rufus King's magnetic efforts were of the first consequence. Gouverneur Morris demolished many impracticable notions. But Hamilton, with less direct agency than some of the others in framing the chief provisions of the structure, was essentially the guide of the workmen. Never untimely obtrusive with his opinions, nor backward about giving expression to them when discussion was in order, he brought all the political systems of the civilized world into grand review, and with deferential, courteous and yet authoritative air compelled the ear of the Convention.

Whenever the frame-work misfitted he came to the rescue. In the early days of September the instrument had so far assumed shape that light began to gleam through the shadows. A committee of five-William Samuel Johnson, Hamilton, Madison, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris -were appointed to revise its style and the arrangement of its details. Amendments, however, were proposed, discussed and adopted until the very last day of the session. A series of concessions greatly facilitated the final work, some of the most prominent of the Framers yielding points for the general good which they had hitherto held with great tenacity. Wash

ington, Franklin, Hamilton and others accepted certain features they did not approve, because they believed it was the best government that the genius of America could frame, or that the nation could be induced to experiment upon. The finishing touches to the document were delegated to Gouverneur Morris, whose graceful pen gave to the substance its order and symmetry, and to the text its distinguishing elegance. Finally, as the delegations came forward in procession to sign the Constitution, Hamilton inscribed upon the great sheet of parchment the name of each state in its regular order.* New York not being regarded as officially present the registry reads: "Mr. Hamilton from New York." During the performance

*This Magazine recently published [X., 178] the portrait of Hamilton.

of this ceremony Madison writes that the irrepressible humor of Franklin found expression in pointing to a sun painted upon the back of Washington's chair, remarking with a smile that painters had generally found it difficult in their art to distinguish a rising from a setting sun. "I have often and often," he continued, "in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that sun behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now I have the happiness to know that it is the rising sun."

Mr. Bancroft says: "The members were awe-struck at the result of their councils; the Constitution was a nobler work than any one of them had believed it possible to devise. They all on that day dined together, and took a cordial leave of each other."

Such an assemblage for such an object the world had never before witnessed. In parliamentary talent and civic wisdom it proved itself superior even to that famous Congress which twelve years before occupied the same hall, and upon which Pitt lavished his rhetoric of praise. When the Constitution was subsequently submitted for the ratification of the several states, the debates in popular meetings and in state conventions summoned to the front every giant mind. But the Framers had built their foundation upon solid rock. They had grasped the principles of freedom and invested them with the breath of perpetual life. They had produced a written instrument-capable of taking in whole sermons between its lines —which was an exact form of government, to be deliberately adopted by the American people themselves, for public administration. The value of their legacy, to a countless posterity, is beyond measurement or expression. The Framers of the Constitution must ever preside in the national memory; and this great and prosperous country is their everlasting monument.

Martha & Lamb

[FOR nearly all the rare portraits illustrating the text of the above article, the Magazine is indebted to the generous courtesy of the eminent and liberal-minded collector, Thomas Addis Emmet.-EDITOR.]

VOL. XIII.-No. 4.-23

BELLOMONT AND RASLE IN 1699

Before me lie two letters, written in a fair and clear hand, on giltedged paper, now yellow with age.* They immediately relate to an incident of some historic importance; and they are connected with events which caused great excitement at the time, and which were afterwards interwoven with the strifes of parties in England, and bequeathed one black name to the chronicles of crime. They, moreover, introduce us to two interesting personages, one, the writer of these letters-one of the most accomplished and popular of the royal governors sent over to these colonies the other, the Jesuit missionary among the Indians, Father Rasle.

The closing part of the seventeenth century was a period of deep gloom in the Northern colonies, on account of Indian wars, heavy taxes entailed by unsuccessful military expeditions, unsettled currency and government, loss or curtailment of chartered rights, and conflict with ruling powers in the mother country, and, to cap the climax of horrors, the outbreak of devilish malice in the form of "witchcraft." It seemed as if the infernal fires were kindling the dusk of the waning century with their lurid light. Another crime, from which some northern seaports were said to derive a clandestine profit, was piracy. In a loose state of international law, privateering casily degenerated into piracy. King William III. made strong efforts to suppress it. The royal Governor of New York, Fletcher, was charged with guilty connivance. A new governor was now appointed, with quite extensive authority, being made the representative of royalty at once in New York, in Massachusetts, which included the province of Maine, and in New Hampshire. The person chosen for this comprehensive office was an Irish nobleman, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont. He was appointed in 1695, but remained in England for two years longer. He was puzzled to know which of his governments he ought to visit first; he was told in London that "the merchants and others belonging to New England did little stomach the discourse that had been about the town, of his going first to New York, as if the people of New England (who are the bigger body of people and far more considerable than the others) were thereby slighted." But he went to New York first, arriving there in April, 1698. The voyage had taken him nearly as many months as it now would days.

*The original letters are in the collection of Autographs belonging to the Rhode Island Historical Society.