Jay's response to Hamilton's proposal is not of record, but some time afterward the great Federalist's letter was found carefully filed among the papers in the public archives, bearing an indorsement in the Governor's handwriting: "This is a measure for party purposes which I think it would not become me to adopt." The sincerity of Jay's action has been doubted. He was about to retire from public life, it was said, with no political future before him, and with that courage which inspires a man under such circumstances, he declined to act. But Jay's treatment of Hamilton's suggestion stands out conspicuously as his best judgment at the most trying moment in a long and eventful life. Jay was a stalwart Federalist. He had supported Washington and Hamilton in the making of a federal constitution; he had approved the alien and sedition laws; he had favourably reported to the Legislature the proposed amendments of Massachusetts, limiting service in Congress to native-born citizens; he regarded the advent of Jefferson and his ideas with as much alarm as Hamilton, and he knew as well as Hamilton that the adoption of the district plan of choosing electors would probably defeat the Virginian; but to call an extra session of the Legislature for the purpose indicated by Hamilton, would defeat the expressed will of the people as much as the action of the state canvassers defeated it in 1792. Should he follow such a precedent and save his party, perhaps his country, from the dire ills so vividly portrayed by Hamilton? The responsibility was upon him, not upon Hamilton, and he wisely refused to do what the people of the State had so generally and properly condemned in the canvassers.