weighing this suggestion you will doubtless bear in mind that popular governments must certainly be overturned, and, while they endure, prove engines of mischief, if one party will call to its aid all the resources which vice can give, and if the other (however pressing the emergency) confines itself within all the ordinary forms of delicacy and decorum.1

Upon the back of this Machiavellian letter Jay wrote the following words: "Proposing a measure for party purposes which it would not become me to adopt." In December Hamilton was himself again. The presidential election had been. transferred to the House of Representatives and the presidency lay between Jefferson and Burr. The Federalists, with whom the decision rested, were disposed to support the latter. To prevent this degradation of the party, the office and the nation, Hamilton exerted himself to the utmost, and with success.

The substance of the remarkable letters through which Hamilton sought to save the presidency from Burr may be expressed in these words: Democracy is a terrible evil; but, since the government must be democratic, let us place it in the hands of Jefferson, who will pursue "a temporizing policy," rather than in the hands of Burr, who is "an American Catiline."

The differences with his party which began in 1800 continued to the end. The Federalists apostatized from national doctrines: he remained true. They censured and he approved the purchase of Louisiana. The projects of disunion which certain Federalist leaders favored, he steadfastly opposed. In 1804 he entered the lists a second time in order to prevent a coalition between his party and Burr; and this effort, although successful, cost Hamilton his life.

This brings to a close the chronological survey of Hamilton's work. What of that work as a whole? The thirty years between his first public appearance, in 1774, and his final struggle with Burr, in 1804, belong to a great period in the history of the world. In the United States three revolutions were accomplished: the first separated the colonies from Great Britain; the second gave us the constitution and the Federalist administrations; the third placed the national government in

1 Works VIII, 549.

the hands of Jefferson. Hamilton's services were rendered in connection with the first and second of these revolutions — chiefly the second. The triumph of the third restricted the sphere of his public activity and usefulness to very narrow limits. That he assisted materially in securing the independence of the colonies is not questioned. Still, his relation to that movement was very unlike that of his fellow-colonists. Only in a superficial sense was the Revolution due to the quarrel over the question of taxation. Rightly viewed, this quarrel determined the time and method of a separation; but the real cause of separation was incompatibility of character and interests between the American and British peoples. In the course of the century and a half- some five generationsfrom the first period of rapid settlement to the outbreak of the Revolution, the English colonists became Americans; and a new civilization grew up which, in important particulars, was unlike the old. The taxation grievance by itself could never have converted a law-abiding people, such as the colonists were, into revolutionists. What did most to bring this about was the recognition, on their part, that in character and spirit there had come to exist between them and their British kindred wide and growing differences; and that out of these differences must arise a perpetual conflict of interests and policy. In this new civilization the two most characteristic features were hostility to privilege and attachment to local self-government, — in other words, democracy and what, owing to the peculiar form of its later most prominent manifestation, we call state rights. Hamilton did not feel in any marked degree the motives which spring from these two characteristic elements of American. civilization. He had not inherited an American character. His ancestry had had no part in the distinctive life of the colonies of the mainland. He came to this country, as he himself tells us, when "about sixteen." Judging from the pamphlets which he published only two years later, he must have been, when he left his West Indian home, as mature as the average American of twenty-two or perhaps of twenty-five. To him America was neither a birthplace nor a nursery; and only in a qualified sense

can it be called a school. It was rather a field into which he entered after his character was formed and his equipment for work was nearly completed. Hence he took part in resisting the mother country, not because he wished democratic institutions, nor because he wished the colony of New York to enjoy the right of self-taxation, but, to use his own words, because the mother country "attempted to wrest from us those rights without which we must have descended from the ranks of freemen." And these rights, as he understood them, were those enjoyed by Englishmen in England. Nevertheless when, owing to the existence in others of motives which he did not feel, resistance developed into revolution, he too became a revolutionist and a very effective one. Even before independence was achieved, Hamilton in common with other patriots was called upon to answer two questions: first, shall the United States be a confederacy or a nation; second, what shall be their institutions and their type of civilization? It is the way in which he answered these questions that has made Hamilton one of the greatest characters in American and in modern history. His reply to the first was that the United States must be a nation, and to this end must have a national government clothed with ample powers to provide for every national want; that the administration must pursue an energetic and centralizing policy in order that the character of the people and the traditions of government might become thoroughly national. This was Hamilton's theory. At the close of the war of independence its realization seemed impossible. He saw in the thirteen states not a nation, but an aggregation of turbulent, semisocialistic democracies, in which the national idea and the highest national interests were being sacrificed to local and class interests and to the idea of the unqualified sovereignty of the individual state. Against these tendencies his struggle, although heroic, was in vain. The riot of democracy and particularism had to go on until those who owned property and those who cared for law and order became thoroughly alarmed. With the rebellion of Shays began in earnest that movement which was both an aristocratic reaction against democracy,

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and a nationalist reaction against state rights, the movement which gave us the constitution of 1787 and twelve years of Federalist supremacy. This reaction was Hamilton's opportunity. He was its master spirit. How wisely he used it in promoting the nationalization of the American people and their institutions we already know.

Not less distinct and scarcely less important was Hamilton's answer to the question what should be the type of civilization in the United States. He wished to create here, as far as the situation would permit, an American England. In all that he did, the models and working ideas were of English origin. He praised the English constitution in the Convention of 1787; the features of our constitution which gave it most resemblance to that of England he defended convincingly in The Federalist. In his career as secretary of the Treasury he probably came nearer than any other American cabinet officer to wielding an influence over Congress comparable with that of a British prime minister over Parliament. The principles that underlie his financial policy are in the main those which had been tested and approved by the experience of England. His tolerant attitude towards the Tories was the natural expression of his English sympathies as well as of his sense of justice and humanity and of wise public policy. But in his use of English ideas he was not a mere copyist. The originality and wisdom with which he modified are as striking as the boldness with which he appropriated. Jefferson and, later, John Adams called Hamilton "British." The word was applicable only in so far as it implied a purpose to establish here those features of the English system which were adapted to the American character and situation. In so far as it suggested a willingness to sacrifice American to British interests, it was grossly unjust.

The value of the service which Hamilton rendered in aiding to re-establish the processes which connected the development of the United States with that of England, is greater than we can easily realize. Although England has made it hard for us to acknowledge the debt, the words of Jay are true:

It certainly is chiefly owing to institutions, laws and principles of policy and government originally derived to us as British colonists, that, with the favor of Heaven, the people of this country are what they are.1

It is also true that a people, as little as an individual, can afford to throw away what is inherited. But, owing to the animosities which the war kindled, to the obstinate unfriendliness of England, and to the seductive policy of France, we were then under strong temptation to develop our national system on a basis too exclusively American and French. From this folly Hamilton helped to deliver us.

Any just estimate of Hamilton's work must take into the account what he did for the education of the public. His usual method of seeking support was through appeals to the reason of thoughtful and patriotic citizens. In this his success was phenomenal. Friends and foes testified that in the qualities. which enable a writer to convince, Hamilton was without a rival. In what he wrote there was rarely a trace of the partisan, never of the demagogue. Much of his work was done while questions relating to the constitution engaged the attention of the public. For the treatment of such themes he had a singular aptitude. The extent of his writings is as remarkable as their solidity. He wrote, often at considerable length, on every important public question which arose during the Federalist period. The result was a collection of writings which embody the best political thought of the time. Indeed, considering both range and quality, it is scarcely venturesome to say that Hamilton's works exceed in value those of any other American

statesman.

What were the defects of Hamilton's statesmanship? First, he failed as a party leader. This was in part because he would not accept the conditions of successful leadership. The party leader who succeeds simply goes ahead in the direction which the party is inclined to take. The apparent leader is in reality the follower. But Hamilton marked out his own course and would not deviate from it. In the second place, his attitude

1 Life and Writings of John Jay, II, 262.