Their ideas were narrow,
impracticable, and hazardous; and they were opposed to the essential
political need of the time--viz. the constitution of an efficient
Federal government. The Federalists may have misinterpreted and
perverted the proper purpose of American national organization, but they
could have avoided such misinterpretation only by an extraordinary
display of political insight and a heroic superiority to natural
prejudice. Their error sinks into insignificance compared with the
enormous service which they rendered to the American people and the
American cause. Without their help there might not have been any
American nation at all, or it might have been born under a far darker
cloud of political suspicion and animosity. The instrument which they
created, with all its faults, proved capable of becoming both the organ
of an efficient national government and the fundamental law of a
potentially democratic state. It has proved capable of flexible
development both in function and in purpose, and it has been developed
in both these directions without any sacrifice of integrity.
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