because it was particularly well written, and of hurrying
Congress to Trenton, when threatened by a mutinous regiment. But he
worked on undaunted, leaving his indelible mark; for he taught the
States that their future prosperity and happiness lay in giving up to
the Union some part of the imposts that might be levied on foreign
commodities, and incidentally the idea of a double government; he
proposed a definite system of funding the debts on continental
securities, which gradually rooted in the common sense of the American
people, and he inveighed with a bitter incisiveness, which was tempered
by neither humour nor gaiety, against the traitorous faction in the pay
of France. He dissuaded Robert Morris from resigning, and introduced a
resolution in eulogy of Washington's management of his officers in the
most critical hour of the Union's history. But his immediate
accomplishment was small and discouraging, although his foresight may
have anticipated what George Ticknor Curtis wrote many years later:--

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