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establish it were not satisfactory. He discussed the relative advantages of foreign and domestic markets, and the circumstances peculiar to the condition of the country, which, in his judgment, rendered the interposition of the government for the protection of national industry expedient and necessary. On all these questions the report covered the whole ground of controversy, and so full and forcible was its argument, that it is now referred to as authority, and as a text-book by those who maintain the necessity of protecting American industry.

General Hamilton's report on the establishment of a mint discussed, 1st, What ought to be the money unit of the United States; 2d, The proper proportion between gold and silver; 3d, The composition and proportion of alloy in each metal; 4th, How the expense of coinage should be defrayed; 5th, The number, denomination, sizes, and devices of the coins; and 6th, Whether foreign coins should be permitted to be current, and at what weight.

These reports of General Hamilton determined the fiscal policy of the United States. The federal government funded its own debt and those of the states. A bank was established, and throughout its career, rendered to the government and to the commerce of the country the services contemplated. A tariff for revenue, incorporated upon the principle of protecting domestic industry was established, and a mint was founded which furnished a sufficient supply of the precious metals for the proper coinage of the government. The credit of the Union and of the states was speedily renewed and invigorated, and the public debt incurred in the Revolutionary war, largely increased in the war of 1812, was finally paid off and discharged during the presidency of General Jackson; and the universal prosperity consequent upon the measures thus adopted, is now a subject of history.

The legislature of New York, as soon as the Revolutionary conflict had ended, devoted itself to the duty of modifying the jurisprudence and civil polity of the state, in harmony with the principles of the constitution and the beneficent spirit of the age. Peter Van Schaack, an eminent lawyer, had been directed, in 1774, to revise the statute laws of the province, a task which he performed with ability and accuracy.

It would be impossible, on this occasion, to review in detail the changes of municipal law which have been made; changes

so great as to have created a code as peculiarly distinct and national as the civil law or the common law of England. The entire criminal code has been revised and ameliorated, by the substitution of a humane penitentiary system, with moral discipline and religious instruction established in lieu of a system which denounced the penalty of death for almost every form of municipal offence; and the new system has been recently improved by establishing a separate institution for the reformation of female offenders, under the exclusive care of persons of their own sex. The relations of debtor and creditor have been modified, and while frauds and dishonesty have been subjected to rightful punishment, the honest but unfortunate debtor is relieved from oppression. The relations of landlord and tenant have been divested of every remnant of feudal service, and conformed to the equal spirit of republican institutions. The laws concerning insane persons, copied from an English statute, passed in the reign of Queen Anne, by which those unhappy persons who were bereft of reason were classed with "vagrants and disorderly persons," and required to be imprisoned to protect society against their violence, have been modified; and an institution has been erected in which they are cured of their mental and physical maladies, with all the aids which modern science has devised in that interesting department of the healing

art.

Preferences of primogeniture and of sex in regard to descents have been abolished, and judicious precautions have been adopted to prevent the too great accumulation and too long duration of estates. The rights of married women have been enlarged. The alienation of land has been relieved from embarrassments and obstructions; and the general registration of deeds and incumbrances has resulted in promoting the convenience of acquiring and the disposing of real estate. Joint tenancies have been changed into tenancies in common. Lands mortgaged for the payment of debts have been placed at the disposal of the mortgagee and executor. Obstructions in the way of executions upon property, have been removed. Technicalities in conveyances have been dispensed with. The intricate statutes in regard to uses and trusts have been simplified. The system of pleadings and practice in courts of law and equity, has been rendered less tedious and expensive.

Samuel Jones was distinguished as the prominent leader in these improvements in jurisprudence, and especially as the author of the statute for the amendment of the law and the better advancement of justice, and the laws relating to real estate. But there is one feature in this progress of improvement too prominent to be passed without more special notice. The first public evidence that justice was awakened in regard to the bondage of the African race, was manifested in a law passed during the Revolution, by which slaves were invited to enlist in the provincial forces, with the consent of their masters, under a promise of emancipation after the term of their military service. When the constitution of the United States was formed, enlightened men throughout the Union could not close their eyes against the evils which must obviously flow from guarantying, in that instrument, the perpetual maintenance of slavery; and while a portion of the states refused to enter the compact, except upon receiving concessions which they deemed sufficient to secure themselves against an early abolition of slavery by the power of the general government, this state, and others, refused to assent to a phraseology which could be construed to forbid emancipation; and all agreed to confer upon Congress the right to inhibit the importation of slaves after the year 1808. The right of suffrage, under the first constitution of this state, was granted to free citizens, without distinction on the ground of color or descent. Mr. Jay was absent when the constitution prepared by him was adopted by the convention. In a letter addressed to two members of that body soon afterward, Mr. Jay, after objecting to some features of the constitution, said, "The other parts I approve, and only regret that like a harvest cut before it was all ripe, some of the grains have shrunk. I should have been for a clause against the continuance of domestic slavery." In 1788, the legislature passed an act which struck at the foreign slave-trade, but not at the existence of the institution of slavery itself. This act declared "that if any person should sell, within this state, any negro or other person, who had been imported or brought into the state after the first of June, 1785, such seller should be deemed guilty of a public offence, and the person so imported or sold should be reprieved." Having been elected to the office of governor, in 1795, John Jay diligently prosecuted his philanthropic purpose of procuring the abolition of slavery.

Unwilling to expose that measure to the spirit of party, he did not recommend it in his first speech, but it was introduced by one of his friends into the house of assembly. After a protracted discussion, the bill was defeated, and a resolution was passed "that it would be unjust to deprive any citizen of his property without a reasonable pecuniary compensation to be rendered at the expense of the state." The effort was renewed in 1797, but was successfully resisted, and no vote was taken on the merits. of the question. John Jay had long before declared, "that were he a member of the legislature, he would introduce a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery, and would never desist from urging its passage until it became a law, or he ceased to be a member." True to the principle thus avowed, he, in 1798, caused a bill to be introduced for the fourth, and, happily, for the last time. It was passed by majorities of ten in the senate and twenty-six in the assembly, and may be justly regarded as the crowning event of John Jay's administration. Slavery, however, still lingered, under some reservations contained in the law, until in March, 1817, during the administration of Daniel D. Tompkins, the annihilation of this form of bondage was effectually secured by an act emancipating "every" negro, mulatto, or mustee, within the state, born before the Fourth of July, 1799. The new constitution of the state, adopted in 1821, took a retrograde step in requiring of colored persons a property qualification of two hundred and fifty dollars as a condition of suffrage, while white citizens were allowed to vote without any such possessions.* In 1840, with a view to the better protection of persons unlawfully claimed by virtue of the constitution of the United States as fugitives from service in other states, the legislature extended to those claimed as such fugitives the privilege of a jury to try the question of servitude. In 1841, a law, which until then had been in force, permitting persons from other states, travelling within this state, to exercise rights as masters over slaves attending them, for a period not exceeding nine months, was repealed; and about the same time the executive authority decided that the state could not surrender, as a fugitive from justice, a person charged with stealing a slave as property; because this state could not admit that by the force of any human consti

*The same undemocratic feature is found in the constitution of 1846.--Ed.

tution or laws, one human being could become the property of another.*

Robert R. Livingston filled the office of chancellor from 1777 to 1801; John Lansing, junior, from 1801 to 1814; James Kent, from the latter year to 1823; Nathan Sandford, from that period to 1826, when Samuel Jones was appointed, who, in 1828, gave place to Reuben H. Walworth, the present chancellor.

The office of chief justice was, in 1777, assigned to John Jay, who was succeeded in 1779 by Richard Morris, who performed its duties until 1790, when Robert Yates was appointed. His successor was John Lansing, junior, who held the office from 1798 to 1801, when the office devolved upon Morgan Lewis, who was, in 1804, succeeded by James Kent, who being appointed chancellor in 1814, resigned the office of chief justice, and was succeeded by Smith Thompson, afterward secretary of the navy, and now one of the judges of the supreme court of the United States. Ambrose Spencer was appointed chief justice in 1819, and in 1823 was succeeded by John Savage, who resigned in 1837, and Samuel Nelson, the present chief justice, was thereupon appointed. The following persons have filled the offices of justices of the supreme court, and were appointed in the order in which they are named: Robert Yates, John Sloss Hobart, John Lansing, junior, Morgan Lewis, Egbert Benson, James Kent, John Cozine, Jacob Radcliff, Brockholst Livingston, Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, Daniel D. Tompkins, William W. Van Ness, Joseph C. Yates, Jonas Platt, John Woodworth, Jacob Sutherland, William L. Marcy, Samuel Nelson, Greene C. Bronson, and Esek Cowen.

The office of attorney-general has successively devolved on Egbert Benson, Richard Varick, Aaron Burr, Morgan Lewis, Nathaniel Lawrence, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Ambrose Spencer, John Woodworth, Matthias B. Hildreth, Abraham Van Vechten, Martin Van Buren, Thomas J. Oakley, Samuel A. Talcott, Greene C. Bronson, Samuel Beardsley, Willis Hall, and George P. Barker.

While the legislature was busily engaged in modifying the municipal law, the higher courts were not less assiduous in expounding the new statutes. But the materials for writing the

* Vide "Virginia Controversy," in subsequent pages of this volume.-Ed.

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