To Mr. Adams personally, the opposition was of two kinds; the first seeking his personal overthrow, the second that of his party-the one headed causes of my disapprobation proceed from yourself and other members of the administration, who would be understood to be the sources of any information, whatever cover I might give the thing."-Ibid. 397. On Sept. 3, Mr. Wolcott replies as follows: "It is, as I conceive, perfectly proper, and a duty to make known those defects and errors which disqualify Mr. Adams for the great trust with which he is now invested; bu: the publi. cation of particulars, incidents and conversations, the knowledge of which has resulted from official relations, will by many good men be considered as improper. The most flagrant outrage on decency attended the demand of Mr. McHenry's resignation. Perhaps there exists no obligation to conceal what occurred at the time the official relation was dissolved; and it is, I presume, equally fair to deduce evidences of unfitness from any notorious cir cumstances which have attended the President's administration. My statement will be made on these principles."-Ibid. 416. In this pamphlet, the tone of which towards Mr. Adams is that of the most bitter and radical censure, the whole of Mr. Adams' relations to his cabinet are brought up in judgment against him, and every incident, no matter how private, of his official conduct is collected and canvassed. The altercation at Trenton, where Mr. Adams, suspicious that something was wrong, had swept unexpectedly down upon Mr. Wolcott and Mr. Pinckney, on the eve of an "accidental" meeting with Mr. Hamilton, (Ham. Let. 37 ;) the collision with Mr. McHenry, at which no eye-witness, except, perhaps, Mr. Wolcott, was present, and which is declared to have been "of a nature to excite alternately pain and laughter" (Ibid. 39); the paroxysms of anger by which "most, if not all his ministers" "have been humiliated" (Ibid. 38); the tone of his mind at one period, and the state of his temper at another; are referred to with such minuteness of detail, as to leave but one of two conclusions: either that Mr. Hamilton was grossly imposing upon others, or that one, at least, of the secretaries had betrayed his trust. The former assumption is negatived by the following letter from Mr. Wolcott, then still secretary, to Mr. Hamilton, dated Oct. 1, 1808. "I have received your favour of September 26, and I have made a few notes, which I will write and send to you to-morrow. The style and temper are excellent. No observations occur to me on the first part of the draught. You will judge of the expediency of sending the letter from the information which you possess of public opinion." Again, on Oct. 2, 1800. "I think the letter may with propriety be sent to your friends elsewhere than in New England, if it is published at all. The letter ought and will influence the election. If it is sent merely as a defence of your character, and that of your friends, and not to influence the election, the publication should be deferred until the election is over. A principal merit of the composition consists in its frankness. Peculiar caution is therefore necessary in stating all the motives of the publication. I have thought, hitherto, that Mr. Adams ought, by all fair and honourable means, to be deprived of votes. * * There is a party in this state (Maryland), who consider Mr. Adams as a character exactly suited to their views, and I believe it to be their intention to give him exclusive support. To counteract this policy, it will be necessary to have some votes withdrawn from Mr. Adams." (2 Gibbs' Wol. 430.) But even Mr. Hamilton's assaults are not bitter enough for the taste of the "confidential advisers" of the officer upon whom these assaults were made, and Mr. Wolcott, in the letter just quoted, even chides Mr. Hamilton for intimating that "Mr. Adams would obtain all the votes of that state," (Connecticut,) since "the expression of such an expectation might, in some degree, contribute to produce that effect." "As to the measure itself," (the publication of the letter,) he proceeds to say, "I can give no opinion; my feelings and individual judgment are in favour of it. I never liked the half way plan which has been pursued."-- Ibid. On Nov. 8, 1800, the Maryland election having then definitely settled the presidency, Mr. Wolcott sent in a resignation of his secretaryship, to take effect on the last day of De cember. Mr. Adams' reply shows that he had little suspicion of the fact that afterwards burst upon him with such terrible force, and which led to the letters to Mr. Cunningham, and the publications in the Patriot newspaper. "Although I shall part with your services as Secretary of the Treasury with reluctance and regret," he says, "I am nevertheless sensible that you are the best and the only judge of the expediency of your resignation." Nor was this a mere matter of courtesy, for afterwards, in sending Mr. Wolcott a commission as circuit judge under the judicial act of 1800, he says, "I have never allowed myself to speak much of the gratitude due from the public to individuals for past services. But I have always wished that more should be said of justice. Justice is due from the public to itself, and by Mr. Hamilton, the other by Mr. Jefferson. However conspicuous may have been other actors, there is no doubt that by these two remarkable men were the post-revolutionary parties moulded. In their mode of operation, it is true, they widely differed. In the Vice-President's chair sat Mr. Jefferson, serene, self-possessed and seemingly passive, surrounded by a senate twothirds of whom were politically hostile at a time when political hostility was personal, and in a city where factions ran so high that, as Mr. Marshall, a senator from Kentucky, declared, those who happened to accompany the Vice-President from the senate chamber to the Indian Queen tavern, where he lodged, often had to ward off insults which were aimed at him. The chair of the Senate he filled with ease and dignity, dividing his time, when out of it, between the company of literary men, particularly foreigners, of which he was very fond, and the Philosophical Society, upon which and on its committees he was a sedulous attendant. As a politician, the public never saw him. Addresses he never answered, speeches he never made: and yet rarely has there ever been a party so disciplined as that which looked up to him as its chief. This was not by any active service which he himself performed. If a code of resolutions were to be enounced to settle the faith of the infant party, Mr. Madison's judicious pen was invoked to give them shape, and his presence in the Virginia Legislature was required to add dignity to their utterance. If the young energies of the west were to be awakened, Mr. Nicholas' bolder genius was employed to impel Kentucky to a manifesto still more impetuous. Through Mr. Livingston was the alien law to be attacked; through Mr. Gallatin the funding system to be dissected; and yet while the agents of the party were operating throughout the land in perfect harmony, and with unexampled industry and skill, its chief continued, with the same disengaged equanimity, to preside in the Senate in the morning, and to pursue his philosophical amusements in the afternoon. No call was heard for caucuses, and even the hoarse voice of the Aurora, the most vehement of party organs, never uttered any of those significant notes by which the wandering emissaries are to be recalled to the central roost for fresh instructions. Even now, when Mr. Jefferson's correspondence, or at least the most unguarded portions of it, have been published, nothing is so striking as the reserved attitude he maintains: no edicts are announced. It was from his lieutenants, and not from himself, that the orders were to issue: "Can you not induce Mr. Madison to put his views of these laws upon paper?" Mr. Nicholas has the matter in hand, and will give you his impressions." The ease with which the machine justice is also due to individuals. When the public discards or neglects talents or integrity, united with meritorious past services, it commits iniquity against itself by depriving itself of the benefit of future services, and it does wrong to the individual, by depriving him of the reward which long and faithful services have merited. Twenty years of able and faithful service on the part of Mr. Wolcott, remunerated only by a simple subsistence, it appeared to me, to constitute a claim upon the public, which ought to be attended to. As it was of importance that no appointment should be made that would be refused, I took measures to ascertain from your friends the probability of your acceptance, and then made the nomination, happy to have so fair an opportunity to place you beyond the reach of will and pleasure. I wish you much pleasure and more honour in your law studies and pursuits, and doubt not that you will contribute your full share to make justice run down our streets as a stream." 2 Gibbs' Wol. 497. Such was almost the last official act of the veteran statesman; and when it is remembered that the party on whom he conferred a benefit so solid, in language so kind and almost tender, had been the promoter of a scheme for his official defeat and his personal humiliation, he is certainly in a great measure vindicated from the charge of excessive jealousy and suspicion, which Mr. Hamilton fastened upon him. To assaults so subtle as these, the "ferocity of the attack" complained of by an accomplished writer in the New York Review, (vol. 10, p. 63,) as made by Mr. Jefferson's partisans upon Mr. Adams', were acts of friendship; and such was the opinion of Mr. Adams himself in after life, when he contrasted the secret hostility of the one, with the open opposition of the other. worked can now be understood, by seeing how nicely each workman was fitted to his post. Thus, on the appearance of Mr. Hamilton's "Marcellus" letters, Mr. Madison was detailed to answer them, for "there is no person but yourself can foil him;"* and Mr. Pendleton, then to the dignity of spotless age, adding the charms of a style peculiarly gentle and lucid was ordered to issue a review of the Gerry correspondence, "short, simple, and levelled to every capacity." But, at the time, the master hand by which these springs were touched, was invisible to the popular eye. It was recognized by its results, and not by its incidents. The party proceeded in its cycles, not under a stroke given fresh at each emergency, but under an impulse antecedently imparted acting under, the harmony of a system rather than the stress of a decree. The wisdom of its controller, like that of the inventor of the automaton chess-player, became the more wonderful, because, instead of being supposed to play well each particular move, he had the credit of having prepared beforehand, with infallible accuracy, the combinations of the whole game. But, Mr. Hamilton's attitude was far different. He was not only the guide, but the champion of the party. Rejecting the mysterious habiliments of the automaton, he stood before the audience in person bending over the board and moving the pieces unmasked. Whatever was to be done, he did himself. Neither labour, peril, nor exposure, he spared. His mighty arm was ever in the thickest of the fight. Even when a boy of sixteen, his cry against British tyranny floated clear and shrill above the early voice of the revolution. When scarcely twenty, at the head of Washington's staff, the crimson of his sash was deepened with the first blood of Brandy wine, Germantown, and Monmouth. He led the advance guard, at Yorktown, in that dashing charge which, on Oct. 14, 1781, drove in the first of the enemy's outposts. Nor did the field of battle alone know him. Valley Forge found his keen and comprehensive intellect mastering the details of military duty, as well as the principles of military organization, and from that frozen camp, under Washington's great sanction, did he issue those fierce appeals which aroused once more the fire of the almost cowering Congress. The same dashing temper, the same splendid abilities, the same absorbing individuality, followed him into the Constitutional convention, and into the assemblages, popular and representative, by which, in New York, was tried the fate of the instrument which that convention perfected. In Washington's cabinet, which he entered when he was hardly thirty-two, he was not only the enthroned chief, but the undisputed exponent of the party which then began to confine to itself the name of federalist. An incomparable felicity of style and precision of argument were animated by an instinct so fine as to supply him with the logarithms of politics, instead of the more tedious processes which others employed; and, by his immense intellectual vitality, his readiness to expose himself at any point and to every danger, and his intrepid gallantry, he not only centered in himself the whole activity of his party, but, in a manner, paralyzed collateral energy. He became the embodiment of that party, in the same way as Mr. Jefferson's party was the embodiment of himself. Mr. Jefferson spoke • 2 Tuck. Life of Jeff, 30. See McCartney's U. S., 267. † 3 Jeff. Corr., 414. "Hamilton," said Mr. Jefferson, in 1798. (3 Jeff. Cor. 316,) "is really a colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is an host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile, where they might be finished; but, too inuch security on the republican part will give time to his talents and in lefatigableness to extricate them." only through his friends; Mr. Hamilton's friends spoke only through him. The influence of the former was subtle, equal, and gentle, operating rather through the force of a previously given rule than of an immediate precept; the influence of the latter was direct and personal, exercised at the particular moment, and pointed to the particular case. The one committed to his friends the chart by which the ship was to be guided, and then withdrew from their company; the other took the helm himself, cheering them by his presence, and controlling them by his commands. Perhaps Mr. Hamilton's error,-an error to which, next to his reputation for irregularity, may be attributed his want of general popularity, was, that by this process, he was too constantly, too conspicuously, and too familiarly before the popular eye. The public became his valet de chambre, was pamphleteered by him into the closet of his counsels, and alas! into the chamber of his intrigues; and to the public, consequently, he was no hero. But whatever may have been Mr. Hamilton's influence on the country at large, he possessed an unbounded control over interests which, if they did not make up a majority in numbers, possessed at least a preponderance in power. To the revolutions of a great centrical intellect like his, a number of lighter fragments must always adhere; but, besides this incidental aid, he received the adhesion of two classes, opposite, indeed, in motive, but equal in energy. The first comprised those who have already been noticed, who, doubting the competency of the people to carry on the new government, sought to place it under the protection of an energetic and powerful chief. The other is traced by Chief Justice Marshall, a sagacious, but by no means an unfavourable observer, to a more subtle origin. "The public paper suddenly rose, and was for a short time above par. The immense wealth which individuals acquired by this unexpected appreciation, could not be viewed with indifference. Those who participated in its advantages regarded the author of a system to which they were so greatly indebted, with an enthusiasm of attachment to which scarcely any limits were assigned." The result was, that while Mr. Jefferson was the recognized head of what was called the popular party, Mr. Hamilton, though divested of all mere administrative incidents, assumed over the dominant interests an authority which, without the trappings of office, possessed more than its power. It would be unfair, however, to the memory of these great antagonist chieftains, to pass on without noticing those features in their history by which their difference in position can be explained far more rationally, than by the vulgar hypothesis of want of patriotism in the one, or want of honesty in the other. Both started fresh with the revolution, and standing side by side, looked together with the same brave and buoyant confidence on its earlier stages. But here their paths diverged; and while the face of one was turned to the west, and from Valley Forge gazed on the melancholy results of a too • With what terrible force this was made use of appears constantly in the newspapers of the day, and is signally illustrated in that bitter passage of the Cunningham correspondence, where Mr. Adams "denounces his debaucheries in New York and Philadelphia," and his "audacious and unblushing attempts on ladies of highest rank and purest virtue."-Cun. Cor., 160. †The memorable pamphlet in which, to vindicate himself from political corruption, he accused himself of moral, is a pregnant illustration of this passion for publicity. For the melancholy disclosures it contained, there was really no necessity, and so conscious were his friends of this, that they destroyed the sheets as soon as they were issued. Unfortunately, however, a copy fell into less judicious hands, and, of course, the single bird which thus escaped became the mother of a numerous progeny. To the same unhappy taste may be ascribed the series of pamphlets by which Mr. Hamilton afterwards politically destroyed both his party and himself. 2 Mars. Life of Wash., 191. feeble executive,- -a dishonoured currency, a wrangling camp, and a mutinous army,--the face of the other, directed to the Old World, looked down in Paris on the still worse excesses produced by an exorbitant centralism. During the long night of the revolution, the ocean separated them; nor were their occupations the same, for, while the one was struggling to ward off from the young republic the prejudices of a luxurious court, the other was labouring to avert from it the assaults of a profligate mob. It was not until the glorious morning of Washington's administration, that they met again; nor is it to be wondered that they should have brought into that, administration tempers greatly affected by the opposite dangers which they had had to encounter. For nearly the first half of Mr. Adams' term, no opposition was felt except that from without. Indisposed to the performance of executive duties, indifferent to the disposition of executive patronage, the President had left the general management of his administration to his secretaries, contenting himself with occasionally sending in an unexpected nomination, or making an eccentric speech. It was not until the third year of his administration, when, stung by French aggression, he was awaking to his old vigour, that the interests which theretofore had controlled both his party and his counsels, finding that they could not continue his personal subordination, determined to effect his political defeat. At the commencement of his administration, Mr. Adams, under the advice of his cabinet, sent to France a commission, including three envoys, Messrs. Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry. Their arrival in France was the signal for an exhibition of a style of diplomacy altogether unprecedented. The ascendency of French arms, on the Continent at least, was secure, nor was the approaching peace with Austria likely to soothe the irritation which the Directory felt at the refusal of the transatlantic republic to obey its commands. Talleyrand, whose acute eye had but a short time before personally surveyed a large portion of the United States, was now at the head of foreign affairs, and found himself able, from the temporary cessation of hostilities in Europe, to bring the full play of his tortuous intellect to bear upon the American commission. At first every appearance of friendship was held out, but on Oct. 14, 1797, almost immediately after their arrival, the envoys were informed that the Directory felt its dignity extremely hurt by the President's speech at the opening of the preceding session. A public audience, it was announced, could not, under such circumstances, be tendered, but in its place communications would be opened, afterwards known in the United States under the name of the X. Y. Z. correspondence,—which might lead to the restoration of amicable relations. Under this mask a negotiation of the oddest character was begun. Three functionaries, M. Hottinguer, M. Bellamy, and M. Hauteval, holding themselves out to be the representatives of Talleyrand, waited with great solemnity on General Pinckney, and after a few diplomatic salutes, informed him, that in order to appease the wounded pride of the Directory, a bonus must be offered," for the purpose of making the customary distribution in diplomatic affairs." This new view of French indignation so much startled General Pinckney, that, supposing some delusion must necessarily exist on his part on the subject, he requested M. Hottinguer to repeat the proposition to himself and his colleagues jointly; which was accordingly done, though in a somewhat modified shape. But so novel a mode of diplomatic propitiation did not strike any of the envoys favourably; and the result was a long and entangled correspondence, marked by corrupt chicanery on the one side, and ill-concealed disgust on the other. Towards the close of December, however, the request for the "customary douceur" was withdrawn, and the single offer made, that the United States should purchase at par sixteen millions of Dutch rescriptions, which the French government "happened" to have on |