In truth, however, there is not much reason to suppose that the Congress of the Confederation seriously contemplated the establishment of a federal city. They were too feeble for such an undertaking. They could pass resolutions and ordinances for the purpose, and send them to the authorities of the States;--and if a more decent attention to the wants and dignity of the federal body was excited, it was well, and was probably the effect principally intended. If they had actually proceeded to do what their resolution of 1783 proposed,--to acquire the jurisdiction, as well as the right of soil, over a tract of land,--they must have encountered a serious obstacle in the want of constitutional power. This difficulty seems to have been felt at a later period; for the ordinance of 1784 only directs a purchase of the land, and is silent upon the subject of municipal jurisdiction. It is fortunate, too, on all accounts, that the design was never executed, if it was seriously entertained. The presence of Congress in the city of New York, where the legislature of the State was also sitting, in the winter of 1787, enabled Hamilton to carry those measures in both bodies, which led immediately to the summoning of the national Convention.[207] And it was especially fortunate that this whole subject came before the Convention unembarrassed with a previous choice of place by the old Congress, or with any steps concerning municipal jurisdiction which they might have taken, or omitted. For it was no easy matter, in the temper of the public mind existing from 1783 to 1788, to determine where the seat of the federal, or that of the national government, ought to be placed. The Convention found this an unsettled question, and they wisely determined to leave it so. The cities of New York and Philadelphia had wishes and expectations, and it was quite expedient that the Constitution should neither decide between them, nor decide against both of them. It was equally important that it should not direct whether the seat of the national government should be placed at any of the other commercial cities, or at the capital or within the jurisdiction of any State, or in a district to be exclusively under the jurisdiction of the United States. These were grave questions, which involved the general interests of the Union; but however settled, they would cost the Constitution, in some quarter or other, a great deal of the support that it required, if determined before it went into operation.[208] Temporarily, however, the new government must be placed somewhere within the limits of a State, and at one of the principal cities; and as the Congress then sitting at New York would probably invite their successors to assemble there, it became necessary to provide for a future removal, when the time should arrive for a general agreement on the various and delicate questions involved. The difference of structure, however, between the two branches of the proposed Congress,