by citizens of education and means; and the way had been prepared,
consequently, for the attempt of Hamilton to rally this class as a class
more than ever to the support of the Federal government. They were the
people who had most to lose by political instability or inefficiency,
and they must be brought to lend their influence to the perpetuation of
a centralized political authority. Hence he believed a considerable
national debt to be a good thing for the Federal national interest, and
he insisted strenuously upon the assumption by the Federal government of
the state war-debts. He conceived the Constitution and the Union as a
valley of peace and plenty which had to be fortified against the
marauders by the heavy ramparts of borrowed money and the big guns of a
propertied interest.

In so doing Hamilton believed that he was (to vary the metaphor) loading
the ship of state with a necessary ballast, whereas in truth he was
disturbing its balance and preventing it from sailing free. He succeeded
in imbuing both men of property and the mass of the "plain people" with
the idea that the well-to-do were the peculiar beneficiaries of the
American Federal organization, the result being that the rising
democracy came more than ever to distrust the national government.
Instead of seeking to base the perpetuation of the Union upon the
interested motives of a minority of well-to-do citizens, he would have
been far wiser to have frankly intrusted its welfare to the good-will of
the whole people. But unfortunately he was prevented from so doing by
the limitation both of his sympathies and ideas. He was possessed by the
English conception of a national state, based on the domination of
special privileged orders and interests; and he failed to understand
that the permanent support of the American national organization could
not be found in anything less than the whole American democracy. The
American Union was a novel and a promising political creation, not