ated for that purpose. Such an amendment would give the
Federalists six of the t\^'elve electors.
This was Hamilton's plan. In an earnest plea he urged
Jay to convene the Legislature in extraordinary session for
this purpose. "The anti-Federal party," he wrote to the
Governor, "is a composition indeed of very incongruous ma-
terials, but all tending to mischief; some of them to the over-
throw of the government by stripping it of its due energies ;
others of them by revolutionising it after the manner of
Bonaparte. The government must not be confided to the cus-
tody of its enemies, and, although the measure proposed is
open to objection, a popular government cannot stand if
one party calls to its aid all the resources which vice can
give, and the other, however pressing the emergency, feels
itself obliged to confine itself within the ordinary forms of
delicacy and decorum."^^

Jay's response to Hamilton's proposal is not of record,
but some time afterward the great Federalist's letter was
found carefully filed among the papers in the public ar-
chives, bearing an indorsement in the Governor's handwrit-
ing: "This is a measure for party purposes which I think
it would not become me to adopt."

The sincerity of Jay's action has been doubted. He was
about to retire from public life, it was said, with no political
future before him, and with that courage which inspires a
man under such circumstances, he declined to act. But
Jay's treatment of Hamilton's suggestion stands out con-
spicuously as his best judgment at the most trying moment
in a long and eventful life. Jay was a stalwart Federalist.
