The ideas of a statesman like Hamilton, earnestly bent on the discovery and inculcation of truth, do not pass away.  Wiser than those by whom he was surrounded, with a deeper knowledge of the science of government than most of them, and constantly enunciating principles which extended far beyond the temporizing policy of the hour, the smiles of his opponents only prove to posterity how far he was in advance of them.

The following extract from a letter of James M’Henry, Lafayette’s former aide, and a member of the Congress, is interesting as a commentary on the difficulties of our hero’s position while a member of that body.

DEAR HAMILTON:  The homilies you delivered in Congress are still remembered with pleasure.  The impressions they made are in favour of your integrity; and no one but believes you a man of honour and of republican principles.  Were you ten years older and twenty thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.  You are supposed to possess various knowledge, useful, substantial, and ornamental.  Your very grave and your cautious, your men who measure others by the standard of their own creeping politics, think you sometimes intemperate, but seldom visionary:  and that were you to pursue your object with as much cold perseverance as you do with ardour and argument, you would become irresistible.  In a word, if you could submit to spend a whole life in dissecting a fly you would be, in their opinion, one of the greatest men in the world.  Bold designs; measures calculated for their rapid execution; a wisdom that would convince from its own weight; a project that would surprise the people into greater happiness, without giving them an opportunity to view it and reject it, are not adapted to a council composed of discordant elements, or a people who have thirteen heads, each of which pay superstitious adorations to inferior divinities.

     Adieu, my dear friend, and in the days of your happiness drop a
     line to your

     M’HENRY.

At the end of 1783 Hamilton was convinced that he was of no further immediate use to the country, and refused a reelection to the Congress, despite entreaty and expostulation, returning to the happiness of his domestic life and to his neglected law-books.  The British having evacuated New York, he moved his family there and entered immediately upon the practice of his profession.

BOOK IV

“ALEXANDER THE GREAT”

INCLUDING THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

I