To
the Speaker of the House, he outlined the steps necessary to be taken
if the Union was to be preserved. It was the swan song of extreme
centralisation. He would make the national judiciary districts much
smaller, greatly increasing the number and efficiency of the judges,
and also have national justices of the peace in every county. He would
give the Central Government power to construct roads and canals, would
increase the taxes, build a powerful navy, and make permanent the
provisional army. To reduce the dangerous power of the great States
and to curb their rivalry with the nation, he would divide them into
smaller States.
It was entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had
gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in.
Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in
reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism
had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, its
unconscious mainstay, was dead.
"The irreparable loss of an estimable man removes a control which was
felt and was very salutary," wrote Hamilton to a foreign correspondent.
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