to employ their passions, and has compelled them at last to give way to that better order of men who have appealed to their reason. The difficulty of getting the assent of all the States to radical changes in the federal system, and the uncertainty as to the mode in which such changes could be effectively adopted, were also among the reasons which led many persons to regard the Convention as an experiment of doubtful expediency. The States had hitherto acted only in their corporate capacities, in all that concerned the formation and modification of the Union. The idea of a Union founded on the direct action of the people of the States, in a primary sense, and proceeding to establish a federal government, of limited powers, in the same manner in which the people of each State had established their local constitutions, had not been publicly broached, and was not generally entertained. Indeed, there was no expectation on the part of any State, when the delegates to the Convention were appointed, that any other principle would be adopted as the basis of action, than that by which the Articles of Confederation contemplated that all changes should be effected by the action of the States assembled in Congress, confirmed by the unanimous assent of the different State legislatures. The prevailing feeling, among the higher statesmen of the country, was, that the Convention was an experiment of doubtful tendency, but one that must nevertheless be tried. Washington, Madison, Jay, Knox, Edmund Randolph, have all left upon record the evidence of their doubts and their fears, as well as of their convictions of the necessity for this last effort in favor of the preservation of a republican form of government.[388] Hamilton advanced to meet the crisis, with perhaps less hesitation than any of the Revolutionary statesmen. His great genius for political construction; his large knowledge of the means by which a regulated liberty may be secured; and the long study with which he had contemplated the condition of the country, led him to enter the Convention with more of eagerness and hope than most of its members. He saw, with great clearness, that the difficulty which embarrassed nearly all his contemporaries--the question of the mode of enacting a new constitution--was capable of solution. He did not propound that solution in advance of the assembling of the Convention; for it was eminently necessary that the States should not be alarmed by the suggestion of a principle so novel and so unlike the existing theory of the Union. But he was fully prepared to announce it, so soon as it could be received and acted upon. * * * * * It was under such auspices and with such views that the Convention assembled at Philadelphia, on the fourteenth day of May in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-seven.