Such incidents might have served to remind one that the end had not yet come. The difficulties were not yet surmounted, and the rejoicing was in some respects premature. It was now settled that the new government was to go into operation, but how it was going to be able to get along without the adhesion of New York it was not easy to see. It is true that New York then ranked only as fifth among the states in population, but commercially and militarily she was the centre of the Union. She not only touched at once on the ocean and the lakes, but she separated New England from the rest of the country. It was rightly felt that the Union could never be cemented without this central state. So strongly were people impressed with this feeling that some went so far as to threaten violence. It was said that if New York did not come into the Union peacefully and of her own accord, she should be conquered and dragged in. That she would come in peacefully seemed at first very improbable. When the state convention assembled at Poughkeepsie, on the 17th of June, more than two thirds of its members were avowed Antifederalists. At their head was the governor, George Clinton, hard-headed and resolute, the bitterest hater of the Constitution that could be found anywhere in the thirteen states. Foremost among his supporters were Yates and Lansing, with Melanchthon Smith, a man familiar with political history, and one of the ablest debaters in the country. On the Federalist side were such eminent men as Livingston and Jay; but the herculean task of vanquishing this great hostile majority, and converting it by sheer dint of argument into a majority on the right side, fell chiefly upon the shoulders of one man. But for Alexander Hamilton the decision of New York would unquestionably have been adverse to the Constitution. Nay, more, it is very improbable that, but for him, the good work would have made such progress as it had in the other states. To get the people to adopt the Constitution, it was above all things needful that its practical working should be expounded, in language such as every one could understand, by some writer endowed in the highest degree with political intelligence and foresight. Upon their return from the Federal Convention, Yates and Lansing had done all in their power to bring its proceedings into ill-repute. Pamphlets and broadsides were scattered right and left. The Constitution was called the "triple-headed monster," and declared to be "as deep and wicked a conspiracy as ever was invented in the darkest ages against the liberties of a free people." It soon occurred to Hamilton that it would be well worth while to explain the meaning of all parts of the Constitution in a series of short, incisive essays. He communicated his plan to Madison and Jay, who joined him in the work, and the result was the "Federalist," perhaps the most famous of American books, and undoubtedly the most profound and suggestive treatise on government that