The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-31

fund. He founded bank. No trace of these achievements are left in our complished much In Hsmiltonfs chosen direction He professed to consider "a national debt a blessing" To him c national debt was useful In attracting the moneyed classes to the support of the government. He wished todraw the moneyed classes about him through his various financial agencies embody- ing thus cent per cent love of coun- try and enjoyed deeply his power of
 dispensing money favors. His son,<un-
 willingly. 1t would seem, has put us in a position. to judge of. Hamilton's attitude toward the public funds. He placed government money where 1t could be got and used by personal friends to promote enterprises he had induced them to undertake The Pres ident of the bank in New York, where Hamilton kept his private. account, an account that was at times overdrawn, had frequent opportunities to dispense what Hamilton described as his ben eficence" So it had come to pass, the West Indian. with his own ancestors and kin living at an engaging and cheerful distance, out of sight and knowledge, beyond seas, had establish ed himself as an arfstocrat in an Aris- tocracy he meant should perpetuate It. self through the possession of wealth
  Your people. sir: your people Is q great beast" he declared once. strik- ing the table with his fist. Scorning the people though. as he did and pat ronizing the rich with official favors as he did, he kept himself free from per sonal corruption, and when Giles, Mon. roe and Muhlenberg believed they had trapped him and would nave carried home and fixed upon him the charge of trafficking in the funds, he did not hesitate in order to free himself and clear up an intriguing correspondence, promptly to publish to the world his own and Mrs. Reynolds shame.
 In furtherance of his general plan to make government source Of bounty, of subsidy inspired patriotism, he ad- vanced in his next important step to his report on the manufactures" This is famous not so much for what 1t contains as because we have there the lisping statement of the fallacy of protection. Protectionists with us long since took up more advanced ground, and Hamilton's reasoning has no application to existing conditions Our protectionist dismfsses the old plea for infant industries, Ciay's plea for preparedness in war and would have us believe that by some 1egerdemain in the imposition of taxes and their dis- tribution. taxes become productive. and we Cdn dll ECl5 ItCn tO6CtuClg tAdl at T the very worst we compel the foreigner to support us. It savers of the political, of course, and I say 1t in deference, 1 Hamilton did aid in the establishment of the protective system and should have the applause of those who believe in that system; and equally the dis praise of those who deny its validity in law, economies or morals.
 Hamilton's later life may be sum- marily dismissed. It reeks with in- trigue. John Adams. who had had painful experiences of it's truth, pro- nounced him the greatest intriguer in the country. Adams he baited con tinuously. He secretly drew him down in the poll when Adams was elected Vice-President. He repeated this and secretly drew him down in the poll when Adams became President. With the same object he wrote a pam phlet traducing him when he came up for reelection. These men belonged to the same party, 1t must be remem-f bered. Hamilton considered himself unrivalied in ability He sneered at Washington privately. confessing pub licly he deemed him an honest man" no more. and he struck at every other conspicuous man of his time, when that man threatened his ascendency He and Jefferson hated each other with a satanic hate, and theirs was pro- longed and bitter struggle. With Washington's death, Hamilton sensibly lost ground. When he wrote Mrs. Washington of that death, he had not ! one word of coincidence for her. It was enough for him to confde to her that the future alone could show how much his own plans had depended on that life for their success. Jefferson proved the master Talieyrand, as we have noted. said Hamilton had divined Europe. Henry Adams. the latest dis putant in the Adams Hamilton feud, wittiiy and soundly retorts upon the Frenchman. "Jefferson divined Amer ica," Jefferson did divine America
 While Hamilton was longing for an other war and conspiring to bring one about to advance his own fortunes looking. with Miranda, at an invasion of Spain's possessions, at Mexico even, while striving for a bigger army a bigger navy. while himself an alien. bent on driving from the country aliens by birth; while aiming drastic laws at the freedom of the press; while his own following, and particularly those in New England we're conspirinE to dismember the State to secede in short: "we'll secede," said Quincy of Masss- chusetts:" Treason" retoined Poindex- ter of Mississippi; while these onnens of strong and arbitrary government or these failing, then a dissolution of the Union, loomed before mems gaze, Jefferson leading, had slowly collected, and he now loosed upon the Federal
 ists the great wave of democratical in-
 stinct in the country, driving Hamilton
 and his following from power, without
 the dignity of party fin defeat, a dis
 trusted and despised faction. Every
 day proves to me more and more that
 this American world was not made for
 me-, Hamilton gloomily admitted Yet
 he intrigued on and plotted. One of his schemes he submitted to Governor
 Jay of New York, and Jay endorsed the letter proposing a scheme for party purposes which 1t would not become me to adopt" His death came as the re. suit of an intrigue entered upon to compass the defeat of Aaron Burr for
 the Governorship of New York Burr's candidacy was backed by Hamilton's own friends, Pickering, Wolcott and
 the rest These realized whatever the intellectual force of Hamilton, he was not available longer as a leader The
 Federalist Party had never dared at
 any time to submit his name to the
 sunrages of the people. His had never
 been a name to conjure with and the
 Federalists turned to Burr as giving the
 best promise of aid for the sinister de-
 signs on foot in 1s03-4. Hamilton, re-
 fusing to go with them, drew apart He
 meant, with the determination of his
 whole soul, never to acknowledge Burr
 as his chief. He strove nightly with
 in the range of his influence in New
 York to defeat Burr. For the third
 time, Hamilton had thrown himself in
 Burr's way and Burr was once mora