his services in support of his adopted country, and became "the principal and confidential aide" of Washington. Entrusted by his chief with the execution of the most momentous and delicate plans incident to the maneuvers of the Revolutionary army, he acquitted himself with distinguished honor. Yorktown found him leading the forlorn hope to a brilliant victory. The Revolution marked him as one of its most intrepid, valiant and illustrious leaders.

With the close of the Revolution came actual independence; and independence presented a question of government, an imminent, important and far-reaching question-the possibility of a national government; a free, popular, constitutional government. The idea of a constitutional government was fascinating, unique; the product of creative genius, of constructive statesmanship. Hamilton alone, at 22 years of age, was thinking "continentally."

Before the close of the Revolution the Confederation had demonstrated its inadequacy, its lack of authority, and its inability to accomplish the ends of government. Hamilton divined the results of its continuation, and foresaw the chaos into which it must ultimately plunge. In 1779 he recommended to the Confederation a plan of a national bank as a restorative of public credit. In 1780, in his letter to Duane, he unfolded a plan of government, comprehensive, novel, but competent to the ends sought. He recommended that the advantages of a monarchy and a republic should be blended, in a written constitution; that the Congress should be vested with powers adequate to the public exigencies, by a convention of all the States possessing power to conclude finally upon a general confederation; that Congress should be given complete sovereignty in all matters relating to war, peace, finance, foreign affairs, equipment of fleets, regulation of trade, prohibition of exports and imports, imposition of duties, granting of bounties, institution of courts of admiralty, coining of money, establishment of banks, control of foreign affairs, including alliances offensive and defensive, and treaties of commerce. "When the Confederation comes to be framed," he said, "it ought to provide for this by a fundamental law."

This master mind, at that early age, evolved and launched upon the troubled political sea a new, novel and potential idea of republican government—a government in specified matters, vesting sovereignty in a federal head and acting directly upon the people of the several States, leaving the States vested with sovereign powers in all matters relating to their respective internal affairs. This idea of government, crude, perhaps, if examined in the light of modern experience, was the product of Hamilton. This idea was original with him. It marked the commencement of an era of constitutional history; it ultimately found harbor in the Constitution of the United States.

Upon the close of the Revolution the cohesive influence of that struggle ceased to operate as a check upon the disintegrating forces which gathered strength from the diversified and conflicting interests of the various States, and the national government became practically destitute of all semblance of national authority. The Congress was powerless to enforce its action. It could solicit from, and recommend to, the States, but could not compel obedience to its most insignificant mandate.

Political union ceased to exist among the States. The public credit had faded away. Bankruptcy, state and national, spread its enervating pall over the hopes, the energies and the aspirations of a free and independent people, whose jealousies and suspicions were seemingly rendering the union of the States impossible.

Hamilton's idea of a union of the States, bound together by the ties and guaranties of a written constitution vesting in a federal head all the necessary powers of a sovereign government, cleared and crystallized with the years.

Struggling, in Congress and out of Congress, to sustain and support the rapidly declining power of the Confederacy; recognizing that the existing shadow of government must soon disappear in the confusion of anarchy, Hamilton directed his energy, his genius, his patriotism, and his very life itself to the creation of a government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.

The people were jealous of national authority, suspicious that the sovereignty of the States would be subordinated and their

liberties lost. The public mind was unready for governmental

innovations.

The years dragged on. No opportunities to institute proceedings for the formation of a competent national government presented themselves. The opportunity must be created; the proceedings must be instituted; the time arrived when a government must be formed.

Foiled in every attempt to induce the calling of a convention of the States to formulate a plan of national government, burdened with the cares of a rapidly increasing practice, he continued, with pen and with the magic of masterly oratory, to appeal to the patriotism of the people, illuminating the necessities of a federal union and the defects of the Confederation.

Out of the commercial rivalry of the States, Hamilton finally drew the opportunity to submit his proposition for the creation of a national government to the consideration and action of the people. Virginia called a convention of all the States, to meet at Annapolis in September, 1786, to consider a uniform system of taxation in commercial intercourse. Hamilton made this convention the opportunity to initiate proceedings to form a constitutional government. He drew the address of the Convention to

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the States, urging the Constitutional Convention of 1787. ton diverted the Annapolis Convention from its original purpose, changed the course and current of American thought, and called a halt in the declension of the federal idea.

New York was the hot-bed of State sovereignty; it was the key to the new situation. Violently opposed to any change in the affairs of the Confederacy or its powers, it was the principal stumbling block in the way of an effective union, because of its geographical situation. Hamilton influenced the Legislature of his State to send delegates, of whom he was one, to the Constitutional convention. This convention was the result of Hamilton's effort; his resistless energy had made possible an American constitutional empire.

He laid before that convention his draft of a constitution complete in itself, capable of being put into immediate and suc

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cessful operation, and not essentially different from the constitution finally adopted by the convention. He presented this plan in connection with the single speech which he made before the convention. That convention marked a new era in national government; an innovation, startling in its scope and character, was about to be introduced: two sovereignties, acting directly upon the same individual, at the same time; but the sphere of action of each, exclusive of the other, were to exist together. The idea was Hamilton's. It was novel; it was a radical departure from established precedent, without model, sanctioned by no test in recorded history; an invasion of the field of experiment, the product of inventive statesmanship.

The convention concluded its labors and submitted the Constitution to the people for adoption. The vast majority of the people were hostile to the Constitution. New York was bitterly and overwhelmingly opposed to it. Her territory lay between the Northern and Southern States, a complete barrier to a successful union. She was absolutely essential to the proposed experiment. Her refusal to approve the Constitution portended disaster and the ultimate defeat of any successful national government.

Hamilton was the leader of the Federalists. He believed in a strong, centralized, representative government; "a government of laws, not of men;" a government whose officers were to be elected by the people and answerable to the people; a government strong enough to accomplish the objects of its creation; a government of checks and balances, consisting of executive, legislative and judicial branches, independent and co-ordinate.

A scheme which embodied all the essential elements of his ideal was before the people, for consideration and adoption.

Hamilton was 31 years of age, the foremost lawyer of the New York bar, a writer of international reputation, the author of a national banking plan, an authority on international law, a disputant who had never left the arena of debate vanquished, a speaker who possessed the highest attributes of oratorical power, the inventor of a new plan of government. No man of the era measured up to him in intellectual strength and inventive genius.

His range of knowledge of the science of government was as wide as recorded history. His knowledge of the law as limitless as the far-reaching, fundamental principles of the common law.

Thus equipped, he assumed, gladly and unhesitatingly, the burden of carrying the Constitution to the approving judgment and affections of the people. Great, able and patriotic men honestly differed upon the proposition submitted. The opposition referred the question to the arena of public debate, violently attacking the Constitution, both from the platform and through the public press. Hamilton joined issue upon the question of the hour, and began the publication of a series of essays in the public prints, known as The Federalist, most of which flowed from his pen. In this field Hamilton was absolutely without a rival. Burr said that "any one who put himself on paper with Hamilton was lost." No man then living could enter the forum of public debate with Hamilton, with hope of success. He was alert and persuasive, his reasoning as clear and direct as an unrefracted ray of sunlight. Of all the essays, pamphlets and dissertations by which it was sought to influence the public mind upon the question of the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalist alone remains to guide and direct the investigation of constitutional law. It is the complement of the constitution itself.

Without precedent to guide, with no such science as the law of a written Constitution in existence, but with a living, vitalizing idea that the proposed Constitution afforded the possibility,―nay, more, the probability, under proper construction, of achieving a representative government strong enough to accomplish the ends sought, Hamilton, snatching moments from his busy and burdened life, entered upon the most elaborate, forceful, profound, eloquent and convincing argument in support of the Constitution that ever graced the literature of any subject.

With a pen of light, refulgent in the gloom of the hour, with a logic as resistless as the waves of ocean, Hamilton elucidated the provisions of that instrument, the most profound, the most important, the most potential ever conceived by human mind; demonstrated its applicability to American conditions and its con