[9] Nearly all the papers in The Federalist first appeared (between October 1787 and April 1788) in New York journals, over the signature “Publius.” Jay wrote only five. The authorship of twelve of them is uncertain, and has been the subject of much controversy between partisans of Hamilton and Madison. Concerning The Federalist Chancellor James Kent (Commentaries, i. 241) said: “There is no work on the subject of the Constitution, and on republican and federal government generally, that deserves to be more thoroughly studied. I know not indeed of any work on the principles of free government that is to be compared, in instruction and intrinsic value, to this small and unpretending volume.... It is equally admirable in the depth of its wisdom, the comprehensiveness of its views, the sagacity of its reflections, and the fearlessness, patriotism, candour, simplicity, and elegance, with which its truths are uttered and recommended.”
[10] The position was offered first to Robert Morris, who declined it, expressing the opinion that Hamilton was the man best fitted to meet its problems.
[11] Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791) by itself entitles him to the place of an epoch-maker in economics. It was the first great revolt from Adam Smith, on whose Wealth of Nations (1776) he is said to have already written a commentary which is lost. In his criticism on Adam Smith, and his arguments for a system of moderate protective duties associated with the deliberate policy of promoting national interests, his work was the inspiration of Friedrich List, and so the foundation of the economic system of Germany in a later day, and again, still later, of the policy of Tariff Reform and Colonial Preference in England, as advocated by Mr Chamberlain and his supporters. See the detailed account given in the article [Protection].
[12] That is, while Jefferson hated British aristocracy and sympathized with French democracy, Hamilton hated French democracy and sympathized with British aristocracy and order; but neither wanted war; and indeed Jefferson, throughout life, was the more peaceful of the two. Neutrality was in the line of commonplace American thinking of that time, as may be seen in the writings of all the leading men of the day. The cry of “British Hamilton” had no good excuse whatever.
[13] e.g. his prediction in 1789 of the course of the French Revolution; his judgments of Burr from 1792 onward, and of Burr and Jefferson in 1800.
[14] After the Democrats won New York in 1799, Hamilton proposed to Governor John Jay to call together the out-going Federalist legislature, in order to choose Federalist presidential electors, a suggestion which Jay simply endorsed: “Proposing a measure for party purposes which it would not become me to adopt.”—Works, x. 371 (8: 549). Compare also with later developments of ward politics in New York City, Hamilton’s curious suggestions as to Federalist charities, &c., in connexion with the Christian Constitutional Society proposed by him in 1802 to combat irreligion and democracy (Works, x. 432 (8 : 596).
[15] Hamilton’s widow, who survived him for half a century, dying at the age of ninety-seven, was left with four sons and four daughters. He had been an affectionate husband and father, though his devotion to his wife had been consistent with occasional lapses from strict marital fidelity. One intrigue into which he drifted in 1791, with a Mrs Reynolds, led to the blackmailing of Hamilton by her husband; and when this rascal, shortly afterwards, got into trouble for fraud, his relations with Hamilton were unscrupulously misrepresented for political purposes by some of Hamilton’s opponents. But Hamilton faced the necessity of revealing the true state of things with conspicuous courage, and the scandal only reacted on his accusers. One of them was Monroe, whose reputation comes very badly out of this unsavoury affair.
[16] In later years he said no debt should be incurred without providing simultaneously for its payment.
[17] He warmly supported the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 (in their final form).
[18] The idea, he wrote to Washington, was “one of those visionary things none but madmen could undertake, and that no wise man will believe” (1792). And see his comments on Burr’s ambitions, Works, x. 417, 450 (8: 585, 610). We may accept as just, and applicable to his entire career, the statement made by himself in 1803 of his principles in 1787: “(1) That the political powers of the people of this continent would endure nothing but a representative form of government. (2) That, in the actual situation of the country, it was itself right and proper that the representative system should have a full and fair trial. (3) That to such a trial it was essential that the government should be so constructed as to give it all the energy and the stability reconcilable with the principles of that theory.”