Digital heart book

But even
Melancthon Smith, who distinguished himself in almost daily debate,
acknowledged more than once that Hamilton had convinced him; and others
asserted, with depression, that their minds, which they had supposed to
be their own,--or Clinton's,--seemed to be in a process of remaking.
After all, for the most part, they were sincere and earnest; and
although it is difficult for us of the present day to comprehend that
enlightened men ever could have been so mad as to believe that the
country would prosper without union, that a mere State should have been
thought to be of greater importance than a Nation, or that a democratic
constitution, which permits us to coddle anarchists in our midst, and
the lower orders to menace the liberties of the upper, was ever an
object of terror to men of bitter republican ideals, yet the historic
facts confront us, and we wonder, when reading the astonishing
arguments of that long and hard-fought contest, if Hamilton's
constitution, had it passed the Great Convention, would not have
ratified with a no more determined opposition.


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