h delight and the whole world saw with admiration. He smote the rock
of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth.
He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its
feet. The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly
more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United
States, as it burst forth from the conceptions of ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Your recollections, Gentlemen, your respect, and your affections, all
conspire to bring before you, at such a time as this, another great man,
now too numbered with the dead. I mean the pure, the disinterested, the
patriotic JOHN JAY. His character is a brilliant jewel in the sacred
treasures of national reputation. Leaving his profession at an early
period, yet not before he had singularly distinguished himself in it,
his whole life, from the commencement of the Revolution until his final
retirement, was a life of public service. A member of the first
Congress, he was the author of that political paper which is generally
acknowledged to stand first among the incomparable productions of that
body;[1] productions which called forth that decisive strain of
commendation from the great Lord Chatham, in which he pronounced them
not inferior to the finest productions of the master states of the
world. Mr. Jay had been abroad, and he had also been long intrusted with
the difficult duties of our foreign correspondence at home. He had seen
and felt, in the fullest measure and to the greatest possible extent,
the difficulty of conducting our foreign affairs honorably and usefully,
without a stronger and more perfect domestic union. Though not a member
of the Convention which framed the Constitution, he was yet present
while it was in session, and looked anxiously for its result. By the
choice of this city, he had a seat in the State Convention, and took an
active and zealous part for the adoption of the Constitution. On the
organization of the new government, he was selected by Washington to be
the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and
surely the high and most responsible duties of that station could not
have been trusted to abler or safer hands. It is the duty of that
tribunal, one of equal importance and delicacy, to decide constitutional
questions, occasionally arising on State laws. The general learning and
ability, and especially the prudence, the mildness, and the firmness of
his c