impossible to get an assent to the law anywhere. If the law
for twenty-five years should be accepted, the threatened destruction of
the government would be escaped for the present, and it might, at the
end of a quarter of a century, be easy to reenact the law. At any rate,
the evil day would be put off. This was Madison's reasoning.

But Hamilton did not believe in putting off a crisis. He had no faith in
the permanency of the government as then organized. If he were right,
what was the use or the wisdom of postponing a catastrophe till
to-morrow? A possible escape from it might be even more difficult
to-morrow than to-day. The essential difference between the two men was,
that Madison only feared what Hamilton positively knew, or thought he
knew. It was a difference of faith. Madison hoped something would turn
up in the course of twenty-five years. Hamilton did not believe that
anything good could turn up under the feeble rule of the Confederation.
He would have presented to the States, then and there, the question,
Would they surrender to the confederate government the right of taxation
so long as that government thought it necessary? If not, then the
Confederation was a rope of sand, and the States had resolved themselves
into thirteen separate and independent governments. Therefore he opposed
the condition of twenty-five years, and voted against the bill.

Nevertheless, when it became the law he gave it his heartiest support,
and was appointed one of a committee of three to prepare an address,
which Madison wrote, to commend it to the acceptance of the States.
Indeed, the last serious effort made on behalf of the measure was made
by Hamilton, who used all his eloquence and influence to induce the
legislature of his own State to ratify it. It was the law against his
better judgment; but being the law, he did his best to secure its
recognition. But it failed of hearty support in most of the States,
while in New York and Pennsylvania compliance with it was absolutely
refused. Nothing, therefore, would have been lost had Hamilton's
firmness prevailed in Congress; and nothing was gained by Madison's
deference to the doctrine of state rights, unless it was that the
question of a "more perfect Union" was put off to a more propitious
time, when a reconstruction of the government under a new federal
Constitution was possible. Meanwhile Congress borrowed the money to pay
the interest on money already borrowed; the confederate