Is it not likely that real defects will be as readily discovered after as before trial?
and will not our successors be as ready to apply the remedy as ourselves, if occasion should require it?
To think otherwise will, in my judgment, be ascribing more of the amor patriae, more wisdom and more virtue to ourselves, than I think we deserve.[1] [Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 173.] Nearly five months later, February 7, 1788, he wrote Lafayette what we may consider a more deliberate opinion: As to my sentiments with respect to the merits of the new constitution, I will disclose them without reserve, (although by passing through the post-office they should become known to all the world,) for in truth I have nothing to conceal on that subject.

It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the delegates from so many different States (which States you know are also different from each other), in their manners, circumstances, and prejudices, should unite in forming a system of national government, so little liable to well-founded objections.
Nor am I yet such an enthusiastic, partial, or indiscriminating admirer of it, as not to perceive it is tinctured with some real (though not radical) defects.

The limits of a letter would not suffer me to go fully into an examination of them; nor would the discussion be entertaining or profitable.

I therefore forbear to touch upon it.

With regard to the two great points (the pivots upon which the whole machine must move), my creed is simply, 1st.