and scientific circles—a far cry from the simple democratic beginnings in Boston and Philadelphia, when he had been so keen an analyst of the average man's heart and aspirations.
Samuel Adams, another great democrat whose vision might have helped the convention, was at home, a disappointed and disapproving man. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both abroad.
No other clause of the Constitution has so little reflected the ability of the Fathers as the one relating to the election of the president. The greatness of the men who wrote this constitution looms always larger and larger — an assembly of demi-gods, Jefferson called them,—for they possessed in an unusual degree the faculty of statesmanship, and of seeing clearly what would be the results of a political act. That they failed to see the power of public opinion was one reason why the Constitution was so bitterly opposed that they were unable to have it adopted until, following the suggestion, or rather the demands, of Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the pledge was given that, as soon as it was adopted, amendments would be passed containing the essential provisions of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press.
On Alexander Hamilton fell the burden of defending the Constitution, and under his leadership was founded the first of American parties—the iFederalist party. The methods of party warfare that he inaugurated were to be, in outline, the methods of the next century; the use to which he put the newspapers emphasized more than ever their importance in American government.
With every other aspect of Alexander Hamilton's many-sided career, except that of a journalist, every American schoolboy is familiar. It was, his biographer
