In an account of this convention, written at a later period, Mr. Gallatin said that it was the first public body to which he was elected, and that he took but a subordinate share in the debates; that it was one of the ablest bodies of which he was ever a member, and with which he was acquainted, and, excepting Madison and Marshall, that it embraced as much talent and knowledge as any Congress from 1795 to 1812, beyond which his personal knowledge did not extend. Among its members were Thomas McKean, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the Continental Congress, Thomas Mifflin and Timothy Pickering, of the Revolutionary army, and Smilie and Findley, Gallatin's political friends. General Mifflin was its president. But mental distraction brought Mr. Gallatin no peace of heart at this period, and when the excitement of the winter was over he fell into a state of almost morbid melancholy. To his friend Badollet he wrote from Philadelphia, early in March, that life in Fayette County had no more charms for him, and that he would gladly leave America. But his lands were unsalable at any price, and he saw no means of support at Geneva. Some one has said, with a profound knowledge of human nature, that no man is sure of happiness who has not the capacity for continuous labor of a disagreeable kind. The occasional glimpses into Mr. Gallatin's inner nature, which his correspondence affords, show that up to this period he was not supposed by his friends or by himself to have this capacity. In the letter which his guardian wrote to him after his flight from home, he was reproached with his "natural indolence." His good friend, Mademoiselle Pictet, accused him of being hard to please, and disposed to _ennui_; and again, as late as 1787, repeats to him, in a tone of sorrow, the reports brought to her of his "continuance in his old habit of indolence," his indifference to society, his neglect of his dress, and general indifference to everything but study and reading, tastes which, she added, he might as well have cultivated at Geneva as in the new world; and he himself, in the letter to Badollet just mentioned, considers that his habits and his laziness would prove insuperable bars to his success in any profession in Europe. In estimation of this self-condemnation, it must be borne in mind that the Genevans were intellectual Spartans. Gallatin must be measured by that high standard. But if the charge of indolence could have ever justly lain against Gallatin,--a charge which his intellectual vigor at twenty-seven seems to challenge,--it certainly could never have been sustained after he fairly entered on his political and public career. In October, 1790, he was elected by a two thirds majority to represent Fayette County in the legislature of the State of Pennsylvania; James Findley was his colleague, John Smilie being advanced to the state Senate. Mr. Gallatin was reelected to the Assembly in 1791 and 1792, without opposition.