many of his compatriots, who lived longer, and reached stations which he never occupied. He was born in the island of St. Christopher's, in the year 1757; his mother being a native of that island, and his father being a Scotchman. At the age of fifteen, after having been for three years in the counting-house of a merchant at Santa Cruz, he was sent to New York to complete his education, and was entered as a private student in King's (now Columbia) College. College. At the age of seventeen, his political life was already begun; for at that age, and while still at college, he wrote and published a series of essays on the Rights of the Colonies, which attracted the attention of the whole country. These essays appeared in 1774, in answer to certain pamphlets on the Tory side of the controversy; and in them Hamilton reviewed and vindicated the whole of the proceedings of the first Continental Congress. There are displayed in these papers a power of reasoning and sarcasm, a knowledge of the principles of government and of the English Constitution, and a grasp of the merits of the whole controversy, that would have done honor to any man at any age, and in a youth of seventeen are wonderful. To say that they evince precocity of intellect, gives no idea of their main characteristics. They show great maturity;-a more remarkable maturity than has ever been exhibited by any other person, at so early an age, in the same department of thought. They produced, too, a great effect. Their influence in bringing the public mind to the point of resistance to the mother country, was important and extensive. Before he was nineteen years old, Hamilton entered the army as a captain of artillery; and when only twenty, in 1777, he was selected by Washington to be one of his aides-de-camp, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In this capacity he served until 1782, when he was elected a member of Congress from the State of New York, and took his seat. In 1786, he was chosen a member of the legislature of New York. In 1787, he was appointed as a delegate to the Convention which framed the Constitution. In the following year, when only thirty years old, he published, with Madison and Jay, the celebrated essays called "The Federalist," in favor of the form of government proposed by the Convention. In 1788, he became a member of the State Convention of New York, called to ratify the Constitution, and it was chiefly through his influence that it was adopted in that State. In 1789, he took office in Washington's administration, as Secretary of the Treasury. In 1795, he retired to the practice of the law in the city of New York. In 1798, at Washington's absolute demand, he was appointed second in command of the provisional army, raised under the elder Adams's administration, to repel an apprehended invasion of the French. On the death of Washington, in 1799, he succeeded to the chief command. When the army was disbanded, he again returned to the bar, and practised with great reputation until the year 1804, when his life was terminated in a duel with Colonel Burr, concerning which the sole blame that has ever been imputed to Hamilton is, that he felt constrained to accept the challenge. His great characteristic was his profound insight into the principles of government. The sagacity with which he comprehended all systems, and the thorough knowledge he possessed of the working of all the freer institutions of ancient and modern times, united with a singular capacity to make the experience of the past bear on the actual state of society, rendered him one of the most useful statesmen that America has known. Whatever in the science of government had already been ascertained; whatever the civil condition of mankind in any age had made practicable or proved abortive; whatever experience had demonstrated; whatever the passions, the interests, or the wants of men had made inevitable, he seemed to know intuitively. But he was no theorist. His powers were all eminently prac tical. He detected the vice of a theory instantly, and shattered it with a single blow. His knowledge, too, of the existing state of his own and of other countries was not less remarkable than his knowledge of the past. He understood America as thoroughly as the wisest of his contemporaries, and he comprehended Europe more completely than any other man of that age upon this continent.1 1 While these sheets are passing through the press, Mr. Ticknor "One writes to me as follows: To these characteristics he added a clear logical power in statement, a vigorous reasoning, a perfect frankness and moral courage, and a lofty disdain of all the arts of a demagogue. His eloquence was distinguished for correctness of language and distinctness of utterance, as well as for grace and dignity. In theory, he leaned decidedly to the constitution of England, as the best form of civil polity for the attainment of the great objects of government. But he was not, on that account, less a lover of liberty than those who favored more popular and democratic institutions. His writings will be searched in vain for any disregard of the natural rights of mankind, or any insensibility to the blessings of freedom. It was because he believed that those blessings can be best secured by governments in which a change of rulers is not of frequent occurrence, that he had so high an estimate of the English Constitution. At the period of the Convention, he held that the chief want of this country was a government into which the element of a permanent tenure of office could be largely infused; and he read in the Convention — as Prince Talleyrand, in Paris, about his visit to America, he expressed the highest admiration of Mr. Hamilton, saying, among other things, that he had known nearly all the marked men of his time, but that he had never known one, on the whole, equal to him. I was much surprised and gratified with the remark; but still, feeling that, as an American, I was in some sort a party concerned by patriotism in the compliment, I answered with a little reserve, that the great military commanders and the great statesmen of Europe had dealt with larger masses and wider interests than he had. 'Mais, Monsieur,' the Prince instantly replied, 'Hamilton avoit deviné l'Europe.'" an illustration of his views, but without pressing it a plan by which the Executive and the Senate could hold their offices during good behavior. But the idea, which has sometimes been promulgated, that he desired the establishment of a monarchical government in this country, is without foundation. At no period of his life did he regard that experiment as either practicable or desirable. Hamilton's relation to the Constitution is peculiar. He had less direct agency in framing its chief provisions than many of the other principal persons who sat in the Convention; and some of its provisions were not wholly acceptable to him when framed. But the history, which has been detailed in the previous chapters of this work, of the progress of federal ideas, and of the efforts to introduce and establish principles tending to consolidate the Union, has been largely occupied with the recital of his opinions, exertions, and prevalent influence. Beginning with the year 1780, when he was only three-and-twenty years of age, and when he sketched the outline of a national government strongly resembling the one which the Constitution long afterwards established; passing through the term of his service in Congress, when his admirable expositions of the revenue system, the commercial power, and the ratio of contribution, may justly be said to have saved the Union from dissolution; and coming down to the time when he did so much to bring about, first, the meeting at Annapolis, and then the general and final Convention of all the States; - the whole period |