circumstances which render it, legally speaking, impossible to
question his legitimacy. I consider a war between Britain and France
is inevitable. I have not proof, but some very leading circumstances.
Britain will, I think, suspend her blow until she can strike very
hard, unless, indeed, they should think it advisable to seize the
moment of indignation against late events for a declaration of war.
This is not improbable, because it may be coupled with those general
declarations against all kings, under the name of tyrants, which
contain a determination to destroy them, and the threat that if the
ministers of England presume to declare war, an appeal shall be made
to the people at the head of an invading army. Of course, a design may
be exhibited of entering into the heart of Great Britain, to overrun
the Constitution, destroy the rights of property, and finally to
dethrone and murder the King--all which are things the English will
neither approve of nor submit to.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Born in 1757, died in 1804; a pamphleteer in the agitation
preceding the Revolution; a captain of artillery in 1776; on
Washington's staff in 1777-81: won distinction at Yorktown
in 1781; member of the Continental Congress in 1782; member
of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; Secretary of the
Treasury in 1789; Commander-in-chief of the army in 1799;
killed in a duel by Aaron Burr in 1804.

I

OF THE FAILURE OF CONFEDERATION[42]

In the course of the preceding papers, I have endeavored, my fellow
citizens, to place before you, in a clear and convincing light, the
importance of union to your political safety and happiness. I have
unfolded to you a complication of dangers to which you would be
exposed, should you permit that sacred knot, which binds the people of
America together, to be severed or dissolved by ambition or by
avarice, by jealousy or by misrepresentation. In the sequel of the
inquiry through which I propose to accompany you the truths intended
to be inculcated will receive further confirmation from facts and
arguments hitherto unnoticed. If the road over which you will still
have to pass should in some places appear to you tedious or irksome,
you will recollect that you are in quest of information on a subject
the most momentous which can engage the attention of a free people;
that the field through which you have to travel is in itself spacious,
and that the difficul