ion is sitting in London; just
demands of men who have fought, starving and naked, for a bare
subsistence after the army disbands, modest request for arrears of
pay,--on which to relieve the necessities of their families turned out
to grass for seven years,--pleasantly indorsed by the Congress, which
feels safe in indorsing anything, and rejected by the States, called
upon to foot the bill, as a painful instance of the greed and depravity
of human nature--there you are: no money, no credit, no government, no
friends,--for Europe is sick of us,--no patriotism; immediate prospects,
bankruptcy, civil war, thirteen separate meals for Europe. What do you
propose, Hamilton? I look to you as your Islanders flee to a stone house
in a hurricane. You are an alien, with no damned state roots to pull up,
your courage is unhuman, or un-American, and you are the one man of
genius in the country. Madison is heroic to a fault, a roaring
Berserker, but we must temper him, we must temper him; and meanwhile we
will both defer to the peculiar quality of your mettle."

Madison, who had not a grain of humour, replied gravely, his rich
southern brogue seeming to roll his words down from a height: "I have a
modest hope in the address I prepared for the citizens of Rhode Island,
more in Hamilton's really magnificent letter to the Governor. Nothing
can be more forcible--nay, beguiling--than his argument in that letter
in favour of a general government independent of state machinery, and
his elaborate appeal to that irritating little commonwealth to consent
to the levying of the impost by Congress, necessary to the raising of
the moneys. I fear I am not a hero, for I confess I tremble. I fear the
worst. But at all events I am determined to place on record that I left
no stone unturned to save this miserable country."

"You will go down to posterity as a great man, Madison, if you are never
given the chance to be one," replied the father of American humour and
coinage; "for it is not in words but in acts that we display the faith
that is not in us. Well, Hamilton?"

"I must confess," said Hamilton, "that Congress appears to me, as a
newcomer, rooted contentedly to its chairs, and determined to do
nothing, happy in the belief that Providence has the matter in hand and
but bides the right moment to make the whole world over. But I see no
cause to despair, else I should not have come to waste my time. I fear
that Rhode Island is too fossilized to l