The formation and ratification of the Federal Constitution, mainly through Federal agency, the union of the Anti-Federalists and Republicans and the cordial acceptance of the Constitution, after its amendment, by both, presented, at the commencement of Washington's administration, the fairest opportunity for a real "era of good feeling" that the country has ever known. All controversy upon fundamental questions having been removed, the doors seemed to be thrown open for an amalgamation of parties like that of which so much was said, and with so little result, during the administration of Mr. Monroe. Without any open question affecting permanently every interest, and all the people and all alike, as is the case with such as relate to and embrace the sources of power and the foundations of the government, if the Constitution had been upheld in good faith on both sides partisan contests must of necessity have been limited to local or temporary and evanescent measures and to popular excitements and opposing organizations as shifting and short-lived as the subjects which gave rise to them. But Hamilton took especial care that such halcyon days should not even dawn on the country. He had a riveted conviction--a conviction he took no pains to conceal--that the Constitution must prove a signal failure, unless it could be made to bear measures little dreamed of by those who made and had adopted it; and in his view of the welfare of the country that question could not be too soon decided. The name and influence of Washington was an element of strength toward the accomplishment of his project in that regard, upon which he had expressed a strong reliance in the letter now published by his son, without date but written between the formation and ratification of the Constitution, and he was, of course, desirous to bring all such questions to an early decision, as Washington's long continuance in office was far from probable. He, therefore, promptly seized his opportunity, and at the earliest suitable moment after the organization of the new Government, proposed the incorporation of a national bank. I have already said, and given my reasons for the assertion, that in the whole range of the affairs of the government committed to his charge, he could not have taken a single step which would have afforded such unmistakable evidence of his determination not to be controlled in his administration of the government under the new Constitution by the intentions of those who framed, or of those who ratified it; not one more likely to revive former distrusts, and to infuse new jealousies among the Anti-Federalists in respect to his hostility to republican principles, or better calculated to give new strength to their energies when the proper time arrived for the blast of the trumpet that called every man to his tent. His old friend, Madison, was one of the first to take up the gauntlet thus boldly thrown before the sincere friends of the Constitution.