Even stronger conviction of the critical situation may be gleaned from the private correspondence of the other members, bound by the pledge of secrecy from describing the turbulent scenes attending the sessions. Daily had they seen the difficulty of reconciling the inherited animosity between the Puritan and the Cavalier transplanted to America; between the Established Church and the Dissenter; between commercial and agricultural interests; between a slave system and free labour; between an urban population, accustomed to abide by majority rule, and a rural people, bred to individual freedom and absolute home rule. They had to evolve a system satisfactory to people scattered through thirteen degrees of latitude, with climatic differences arising from a mean average temperature of forty degrees in the north and sixty degrees in the south. Such decentralising tendencies were met with nowhere in Europe save under the strong hand of a monarch in Russia. These climatic differences produced the frugal Northerner, who had to provide in advance for the winter season, and the hospitable planter of the South, in whom prodigality was induced by the very lavishness of nature about him. It was not strange that by contrast, and seen through the haze of distance, the frugality of the North should appear to be avarice to the South; while the hospitality upon which that section prided itself should seem to be prodigality in Northern eyes. These bask differences could be reconciled by compromise, and that only temporarily. Washington had summed up the situation when he declared that there must be reciprocity or no union; that the whole matter could be reduced to a single question--whether it was best for the States to unite.