After deriving so many and such uncommon benefits from the Constitution, the notion of an eventual dissolution of this Union must be held, by every person of unimpaired intellect, as entirely visionary. The state governments, divested of scarcely any thing but national authority, have answered, or are competent to answer, every purpose of amelioration within the boundaries of the territory to which they are respectively restricted; whilst, in times of difficulty and danger, acting directly upon an intimate knowledge of local resources and feeling, they are enabled to afford efficient aid to the exertions of the national government in the defence and protection of the republic. These truths are obvious: they have been demonstrated in times of domestic tranquillity, of internal commotion, and of foreign hostility. In return, the advantages which the national government dispenses to the several states are keenly felt and highly relished. When the Constitution was ratified, Rhode Island and North Carolina, from honest but mistaken convictions, for a moment withheld their assent. But when Congress proceeded solemnly to enact that the manufactures of those states should be considered as foreign, and that the acts laying a duty on goods imported and on tonnage should extend to them, they hastened, with a discernment quickened by a sense of interest, and at the same time honourable to their patriotic views, to unite themselves to the Confederation.
The only alteration of importance which the Constitution has undergone since its adoption, is that which changes the mode of electing the President and Vice-President. It is believed that, all things being duly weighed, the alteration has been beneficial. If it enables a man to aim, with more directness, at the first office in the gift of the people, it equally tends to prevent the recurrence of an unpleasant contest for precedency, between the partizans of any two individuals, in Congress, to which body, in the last resort, the choice is referred. Besides, whether the Constitution should prescribe it or not, the people themselves would invariably designate the man they intended for chief magistrate; a reflection which may serve to convince us that the change in question is more in form than in fact.
To conclude, the appearance of so perfect an edition of the Federalist as the present must be allowed to be, may be regarded as the more fortunate, as the Journal of the Convention that framed
