To these consequences of a dissolution of the Union, Hamilton added another, equally serious. Alliances, he declared, must be formed with different rival and hostile nations of Europe, who would seek to make us parties to their own quarrels. The representatives of foreign nations having American dominions betrayed the utmost anxiety about the result of that meeting of the States. It had been said that respectability in the eyes of Europe was not the object at which we were to aim; that the proper design of republican government was domestic tranquillity and happiness. This was an ideal distinction. No government could give us tranquillity and happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad. This was the critical moment for forming such a government. We should run every risk in trusting to future amendments. As yet, we retain the habits of union. We are weak, and sensible of our weakness. Henceforward the motives would become feeble and the difficulties greater. It was a miracle that they were here, exercising their tranquil and free deliberations on the subject. It would be madness to trust to future miracles.[79]
But these warnings were of no avail against the settled determination of those who saw greater dangers in the establishment of a government which was in their view to approximate the condition of the States to that of counties in a single State. The principle of a proportionate representation of the populations of the State, was just and necessary; but it was now leading to the extreme of an entire separation, because it was carried to the extreme of a full application to every part of the government. In like manner, there was an equally urgent necessity for some provision which should receive the States in their political capacity, and on a footing of equality, as constituent parts of the system. But this principle was now forcing the majority into the alternative of a partial confederacy, or of none at all, because it was insisted that the government must be exclusively founded on it. Neither party was ready to adopt the suggestion that the two ideas, instead of being opposed, ought to be combined, so that in one branch the people should be represented, and in the other the States.[80] The consequence was that the proportionate rule of suffrage for the first branch was established by a majority of one State only;[81] and the Convention passed on, with a fixed and formidable minority wholly dissatisfied, to consider what rule should be applied to the Senate.