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of the convention of the state of New York. A committee was appointed to prepare a constitution, and that task was intrusted to John Jay, James Duane, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert R. Livingston. The draught of the constitution was in the handwriting of Mr. Jay and was submitted by Mr. Duane; and those individuals, together with Gouverneur Morris and Robert R. Livingston, who were also eminent lawyers, gave to that instrument the form in which it was adopted by the convention. Upon promulgating the constitution, the convention appointed a council of safety, which was invested with all the powers requisite for the security and preservation of the state, until a governor and legislature should be duly chosen and qualified to act under the new constition. This council, thus invested with absolute power, nobly justified the confidence reposed in them by the convention, by the wisdom, firmness, energy, and moderation, which they displayed in that trying emergency. Their names were John Morin Scott, Robert R. Livingston, Christopher Tappen, Abraham Yates, junior, Gouverneur Morris, Zephaniah Platt, John Jay, Charles De Witt, Robert Harper, Jacob Cuyler, Thomas Tredwell, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Matthew Cantine, John Sloss Hobart, and Jonathan B. Tompkins.

George Clinton was elected governor, John Jay appointed chief-justice, and Robert R. Livingston chancellor, under the new constitution. Philip Schuyler was appointed, in 1775, a representative in the Congress of the United States, and soon afterward major-general in the continental army. Mr. Jay subsequently filled the trusts of chief-justice of the United States, governor of New York and minister to the court of St. James. The name of Schuyler, although eclipsed during the revolutionary contest by personal and partisan jealousies, is nevertheless destined to maintain a place in the military annals of that period, second only to his, who is without a compeer in the homage of mankind. Woodhull fell a martyr in battle, sustaining the cause he had so ably maintained in the councils of the state. The genius of Gouverneur Morris, as well as that of Robert R. Livingston, will be found impressed upon many a page, in which we are hereafter to record the social, moral, and physical improvement of the

state.

If to Massachusetts belongs the honor of cradling the Revolution, and to Virginia that of having given birth to the author of VOL. II.-5

the Declaration of Independence, and to the immortal chief who conducted the armies until its establishment, New York may, with equal justice, lay claim to the honor of having produced the statesman who chiefly secured the adoption of the federal constitution, and put it into effectual and successful operation. Alexander Hamilton, while yet a student in Columbia College, defended the republican cause in a series of essays, marked with so much ability and wisdom, that they were attributed to the pen of John Jay, who was then in the foreground in the councils of the state and the Union. Of the talents exhibited by Hamilton, as a confidential aid-de-camp of the commander-inchief, we have not room to speak. In 1782, the ardent yet discreet Hamilton, became a member of the bar, and was elected a delegate to Congress, and acquired a commanding influence in that body. In 1786, he was member of the legislature of this state, and in the same year was a delegate to the convention which formed the constitution of the United States. Disappointed in procuring the adoption of what he deemed essential features of such an instrument, he nevertheless acquiesced in the decisions of the convention, and gave his free and unreserved assent to the constitution as it was promulgated by that august body. It was a mighty task to prepare a form of government which should guaranty the union, the liberties, and the happiness of a rising people; but a greater task remained. That people consisted of thirteen states, each of which had a separate constitution, local interests, and peculiar institutions, and was jealous of everything which might, in the remotest degree, tend to diminish power and influence, deemed essential to popular liberty and self-preservation. Whatever rendered the constitution acceptable to one or several states, awakened the jealousies of others, while, throughout the whole Union, the people divided into two angry and violent parties; the one apprehending that the federal power would be too weak to preserve the national security-the other, that that power would be too oppressive, and result in despotism, even more unendurable than that which had been so recently overthrown. To reconcile these conflicting opinions and interests, and procure the assent of the states to the constitution which had been proposed, and when adopted to carry it into successful operation, under circumstances the most disheartening, was the task assumed by Hamilton. He addressed

to the people a series of letters under the signature of the Federalist, in which he received important aid and co-operation from James Madison and John Jay. In this admirable work he expounded the principle of the constitution, and pointed out its application in all the various exigencies of peace and war, and of domestic prosperity and discontent; and such were the sagacity and forecast thus manifested, that the Federalist still remains, after a lapse of half a century, a great and authoritative commentary on the federal compact. These labors were followed by others equally effective in the convention of this state, which resulted in the acceptance of the constitution of the United States by that body: efforts in which he was ably seconded by Robert R. Livingston, while that measure was resisted with great ability by Melancthon Smith and his associates.

The people of the United States were not unaware of the difficulties which would attend the organization of the new government, and, therefore, with the greatest unanimity, called Washington from his retirement to preside in the public council in that emergency. While wisdom and energy were required in every department, that, which was to be intrusted with the subjects of finance, was surrounded with the worst embarrassments. The federal government and the state governments were alike hopelessly encumbered with debts, and the credit of both was prostrate. There was, as yet, no plan of revenue, and no currency. The country was filled with imported fabrics, while every department of domestic industry was deranged. In what manner could a sufficient revenue be provided for the necessary expenditures of the government in so trying an emergency, and how was the exhausted credit of the country to be restored, and its prosperity to be renewed and invigorated? These were among the leading questions, to be settled by the first Congress that assembled after the adoption of the constitution; and they involved controversies in political economy, rendered still more difficult by conflicting interests and discordant views concerning the fiscal principles and powers of the government. Washington, with that sagacity which never erred, had assigned these subjects to the consideration of Alexander Hamilton the first secretary of the treasury.

The work of Adam Smith, on the Wealth of Nations, published the year before the Revolution, though very deficient in me

thodical arrangement, and on many points extremely discursive, was, nevertheless, justly considered as constituting the foundation of a system of political economy, and establishing landmarks for the guidance of subsequent investigation.

Hamilton discussed, with surpassing ability, the fiscal policy of the government in four reports. The first of which was on the public credit; the second, on a national bank; the third, upon manufactures; and the fourth, on the establishment of a mint. To point out the proper means for paying the public debts of the Union and of the states was the object of the first report. He recommended that no discrimination should be made between the creditors of the United States and those of the several members of the confederacy, and that the new system of finance should include the payment of all by the general government.

The report on a national bank commenced with the proposition that such an institution would be of primary importance, for a prosperous administration of the finances, and of eminent utility, connected with operations for the support of public credit, and maintained the expediency of establishing such an institution, in a train of powerful arguments, derived from a view of the benefits which, it was alleged, resulted to trade and industry from public banks, as well as those affecting credit, which, as was supposed, such an institution would afford in the peculiar circumstances of the country. The whole subject of banking, the uses and relation of specie and circulating notes, their respective advantages and inconveniences as a currency, the arguments in favor of banks, and the objections to which they were obnoxious, were all thoroughly discussed. The president had required written opinions from the members of the cabinet, concerning the constitutionality of a bank. Mr. Jefferson, secretary of state, and Mr. Randolph, attorney-general, in their opinions denied the power of Congress to establish such an institution. Hamilton's report may be considered a reply to these opinions, and whatever may be the merits of that still vexed question, this paper is universally conceded to be an able vindication of the side of the argument which the author adopted.

In the report on manufactures, Hamilton reviewed at length the positions assumed by Adam Smith, "that individuals were better judges, than statesmen or lawgivers could be, of the

species of industry which their capital could employ to the greatest advantage; that as every individual was constantly exerting himself to find out the most advantageous use for his capital, the study of his own advantage would necessarily lead him to prefer that employment which must be most beneficial to the general society. That every individual, who had embarked his capital in the support of domestic industry, naturally aimed so to direct it that it might yield the greatest possible profit; that what was prudent and economical in a private family could scarcely be otherwise in that of a great country; that if a foreign country could furnish us with a commodity at a cheaper rate than we could manufacture it, it would be for our interest to purchase it with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a more profitable manner than in making the commodities referred to; and that to give the monopoly of home market to the produce of domestic industry in any art or manufacture, would be giving an artificial direction to private capital that must be either useless or injurious." From which, and similar positions of a like nature, Smith had drawn the conclusion that the application of private capital and labor ought to be as little as possible controlled or restrained by regulations of government. Hamilton discussed these doctrines with great ability. He admitted that if the reason, by which the principle of free trade was defended, had more generally governed the conduct of nations, they might have advanced with greater rapidity to prosperity and greatness than they had done by the pursuits of maxims too widely different. But he insisted that most theories had very many exceptions, and that very cogent reasons might be urged against the hypothesis that manufactures would grow up without the aid of government, "as soon and as fast as the natural state of things and the interest of the community may require." He showed as objections to its truth, the influence of habit, the fear of failure in untried enterprise, the difficulties inseparable from competition with those who have attained perfection in the business to be undertaken, and the bounties, premiums, and artificial encouragements with which foreign governments supported their own subjects, in divisions of industry in which they might be rivalled or surpassed. He also examined the hypothesis of the superior productiveness of agriculture, and maintained with elaborate reasoning that the general arguments brought to

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