LEADERS OF THE REVOLUTION.

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(1762) of the House of Representatives, has been maintained to be the germ of the Declaration of Independence. Richard Henry Lee, saluted as the "American Cicero," has only handed down to us his eloquent "Address (1775) of the Twelve United Colonies."

The master minds of the new era were the soldiers, diplomatists, statesmen, and jurists, who fought for the free soil, sank the deep foundations, and reared the superstructure of the new commonwealth. In civil, as well as literary, history we have often occasion to remark that great men come in clusters: a stirring crisis fills the air with an electric excitement, and the energy evoked in one actor, by the demands of the time, inspires his peers, as by a contagious stimulus, to put forth their powers. This fact was equally apparent in the American, and in, its near successor, the French Revolution: but in the former the struggle with external force preceded, instead of following, internal difficulties; the tasks of the warrior and the legislator more frequently devolved upon the same persons. Washington, as Commander-in-Chief, was hardly more illustrious than Washington as twice-elected President: in both capacities he was Pater Patria. Hamilton, his right arm in the field, was his alter ego in the Senate. Between the two epochs of the new birth of America there is the same difference as appeared in France; but they are chronologically reversed. In the case of the latter, the attack of the allied monarchs merged all parties in defence of a common cause: in the former, the triumph of the common cause allowed the schism of party to appear. Setting aside a comparatively insignificant faction of royalists, there was no difference of opinion about the injustice of the Stamp Act (1765); Franklin was sent to England for its repeal, as a representative of the nation in defiance of Townshend's Tax, the tea was (1773) thrown into Boston Harbour, with equal approbation from

Virginia and New York, while the cry was, Pro aris et focis; all were for the State. The "Declaration of Rights" (1774) was, at the first Philadelphian Congress, unanimously accepted; but already in the discussions about the famous Declaration of Independence (1776)—mainly drawn up by the man of the age who ranks next in genius to the three above named, Thomas Jefferson-there was a divergence. It is insufficiently known in England that, in its first draft, there appeared the following paragraph, certainly the most interesting suppressed passage in American Literature :

"He" (the prisoner then at the bar of Western opinion)" has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative (veto) by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people by crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

This, the most eloquent clause of that great document, worthy of Cicero against Verres, was struck out in deference to the already ominous interests of the South, but it was strictly true. There are few stages in the spread of American slavery, from Queen Elizabeth's partnership with the buccaneer Hawkins, in 1562, to the present Premier's characteristically rash congratulation of Jefferson Davis, in 1864, that Englishmen can afford to contemplate without shame. It was, as we have seen, in 1619, that the first negroes entered the Western continent; but it was not till 1713, when England, as one of the emblems of her supremacy over the ocean, obtained, by

the Treaty of Utrecht, the exclusive right of bringing African slaves to the West Indies and to Spanish America, that the black race, in considerable numbers, became located in those regions. The colonies disliked and strove to suppress the system; but the authorities of the mother country strenuously maintained it. A colonial tax on the importation of slaves was repealed, and, in 1749, an Act was passed declaring that the trade was "very advantageous to Great Britain," while High Church dignitaries vied with each other in proclaiming its rightfulness. In 1777, i.e., at the commencement of the Revolution, one of our leading statesmen protested—“ We cannot allow the colonies to check, or in any degree discourage, a traffic so beneficial to the British nation." The political evil of the "institution" was felt in the comparative paralysis of the Carolinas during the War of Independence, and most of the leaders, as Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, and Adams, were opposed to it in theory, but unable, amid other pressing matters, to deal with it in practice.

The political differences already existing after the surrender of Cornwallis would have rendered any permanent basis for the Union an impossibility, had it not been for the unsurpassed practical sagacity, as well as the inventive genius, of the illustrious group of men, who, in that twilight gloom, drawing confidence from the only source open to them—their own past deeds-ventured on the experiment of laying the rafters of a new society. They had to deal at once with existing facts and with new circumstances. One great political fact was the existing Sovereignty of the States, which—whether royal, proprietory, or more strictly colonial-had joined in the war, in great measure, to maintain their right to manage their own affairs, e.g., regulate their own institutions, elect their own magistrates, and impose their own taxes. Another was the democratic feeling of the Northern, the more aristocratic sentiment of the Southern, States. The differences of

race and the divergencies of interest resulting from diverse industries, which have either occasioned or aggravated the most troublesome of recent controversies, were then initial, but they already added to the difficulty. The royal or English authority, which had hitherto bound together this bundle of sticks, being removed, the problem was by what cord, and with what degree of tightness, to bind them again. No one of that age seems to have contemplated the alternative of letting them alone, and making separate bundles of north, south, and central groups. Hardly any one contemplated, and, after the irritation of a contest in which the King of England personally played so offensive a part, no one of influence dared openly to advocate, a MONARCHY. It was evident that, in deference to the separate States, the Union must be a FEDERATION, and in deference to the general sentiment that it must be a REPUBLIC. This was decided, when at the close of the war "The Articles of CONFEDERATION" were drawn and quickly accepted; for by these little more than a general brotherhood, of all but universal desire, was established. But when, in 1786, a second convention assembled at Philadelphia, with a view to "a more perfect Union," long debates ensued, and the CONSTITUTION, in its main features still that of the States, was only accepted by all the delegates in 1790. Amid a multitude of details that concern the historian of law, two paramount questions had emerged. A Federation may be more or less stringent, i.e. it may leave more or less liberty to its members: a Republic may be more or less Democratic. The majority of the leading minds of the Convention, of which Washington was the President, Madison the chief Director, were in little sympathy with the ultra-democratic tendencies. then beginning to show themselves: the circumstance that four of the first five Presidents were Virginians-despite the fact that one of these led the counter-current-may help to explain their aristocratic leanings: their regard for the tradi

tions and sympathy with the renown of England led them to wish to re-establish in their own a constitution similar to that of the mother-country, minus the king. The same party was naturally that of strong government: they aimed at drawing the bonds of union close, and leaving to the State authorities only the control of matters strictly municipal. These advocates of centralisation, permanent institutions, fixity of tenure in office, and graduated authority, were the party of the FEDERALISTS; among them the best and brightest men of their age and nation. WASHINGTON himself, in so far as he can be claimed by anything less than the nation, was at their head: John Marshall, Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, one of the pilots of the State, who left a stainless name, and laid down the first principles of that international Code afterwards elaborated by Wheaton; John Adams the second; Madison the fourth, President; and John Jay (one of the signatories of the Peace), of whom it was said, "the ermine of the judicial robe, when it fell on his shoulders, touched nothing as spotless as himself"-were of their number.

Of this party, however, the real leader was ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Of Scotch descent, born in the West India island of Nevis, and settling on the Continent shortly before the outbreak of the war, this brilliant speaker, excellent writer, and masterly statesman has been more appreciated by cultivated critics and philosophical politicians than by the bulk of a nation, the dangers of whose future he, perhaps more than any of his time, foresaw, and strove in vain to resist. During the war he was Washington's "most confidential aid:" afterwards, as Secretary of the Treasury, he became the greatest of American financiers. "He smote the rock," wrote Daniel Webster, in his famous panegyric, " of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprang upon its feet." Prince Talleyrand said, "that among the leading men