features, as the life tenure of the President and
senators, and the appointment of State officers by the General
Government, which, in the interpretation of some minds, as Patrick Henry
used to express it, "was an awful squinting toward monarchy;" but, on
the other hand, it should be remembered that the Convention was a
meeting for consultation, with closed doors, in a committee of the
whole, in which perfect freedom in the interchange of views was
desirable; that, in the view of our own day, other members displayed
heresies quite as obnoxious, and that in the final resolves of the
Constitution, Hamilton, with the others, yielded his prejudices, and
became the firm defender of the instrument as it was adopted, and
substantially now stands.

Remember the age of Hamilton at this time--twenty-nine; a greater
prodigy in the Convention at Philadelphia than the youth in the army of
Washington. To no one probably are we more indebted for the Constitution
than to Hamilton. The Convention which laid the instrument before the
country for its adoption had scarcely adjourned, when, in company with
Madison and Jay, he took up the pen in its explanation and defence, in
the celebrated series of papers, "The Federalist," originally published
in the New York _Daily Advertiser_. Hamilton began and closed the work.
Of its eighty-five papers much the greater portion, it is believed, were
written by him.

The discussion of the financial and military powers, the executive and
the judiciary, fell to his pen. In the New York Convention he was again
the efficient advocate of the adoption of the Constitution. In a
separate series of papers, signed Philo Publius, published in another
journal, Hamilton, assisted by his friends, met various objections, the
discussion of which would have marred the unity of "The Federalist,"
which was thus left a classical commentary upon the Constitution.

Having been thus instrumental in forming the Constitution, Hamilton was
destined to be one of the most active agents of its powers. When the new
government went into operation, under its provisions he was summoned by
Washington, to the discharge of one of the most onerous duties of the
department, in his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury. He
continued in office six years, marking his administration--for such it
was in his province--by his report and measures for the funding of the
public debt, the excise revenue system, which he was called upon to
asser