of this country.  Insurance questions, both upon the law and fact, constituted a large portion of the litigated business in the courts, and much of the intense study and discussion at the bar.  Hamilton had an overwhelming share of this business....  His mighty mind would at times bear down all opposition by its comprehensive grasp and the strength of his reasoning powers.  He taught us all how to probe deeply into the hidden recesses of the science, and to follow up principles to their far distant sources.  He ransacked cases and precedents to their very foundations; and we learned from him to carry our inquiries into the commercial codes of the nations of the European continent; and in a special manner to illustrate the law of Insurance by the secure judgement of Emerigon and the luminous commentaries of Valin....  My judicial station in 1798 brought Hamilton before me in a new relation....  I was called to listen with lively interest and high admiration to the rapid exercise of his reasoning powers, the intensity and sagacity with which he pursued his investigations, his piercing criticisms, his masterly analysis, and the energy and fervour of his appeals to the judgement and conscience of the tribunal which he addressed. [In regard to the celebrated case of Croswell vs. the People, in the course of which Hamilton reversed the law of libel, declaring the British interpretation to be inconsistent with the genius of the American people, Kent remarks.] I have always considered General Hamilton’s argument in this cause as the greatest forensic effort he ever made.  He had come prepared to discuss the points of law with a perfect mastery of the subject.  He believed that the rights and liberties of the people were essentially concerned....  There was an unusual solemnity and earnestness on his part in this discussion.  He was at times highly impassioned and pathetic.  His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the Jury and a free Press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression....  He never before in my hearing made any effort in which he commanded higher reverence for his principles, nor equal admiration of the power and pathos of his eloquence....  I have very little doubt that if General Hamilton had lived twenty years longer, he would have rivalled Socrates or Bacon, or any other of the sages of ancient or modern times, in researches after truth and in benevolence to mankind.  The active and profound statesman, the learned and eloquent lawyer, would probably have disappeared in a great degree before the character of the sage and philosopher, instructing mankind by his wisdom, and elevating the country by his example.

[Ambrose Spencer, Attorney General of the State,—­afterward Chief Justice,—­who did not love him, having received the benefit of Hamilton’s scathing sarcasm more than once, has this to say.] Alexander Hamilton was the greatest man this country