Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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revenue system. The national banking is Hamilton's. His great argument on a national bank, evoking for the first time the implied powers of the Constitution, hurriedly prepared amid the multitudinous and laborious duties of his station, will ever cause men to accord to him, among his other amazing powers, a high place in the front rank of the profession of the law. Here for the first time is discovered the clear, but seemingly unfathomed, depths of that well-spring of national authority which has sustained the purposes of the nation to enact any and all laws, which may at home at once make effective the letter of the organic law, and advance the welfare of the American people, and abroad, to give to the just, righteous, and beneficial conclusions of American civilization, expressed by American administration, supported by the moral, and if need be the physical influence of the great Republic, the force and effect of international law.
It is true that this doctrine of Hamilton and his followers, to use the simile of Jefferson on another portentous occasion, was "like a fire bell in the night." To write the history of the resulting struggles over this basic principle of the national existence, as parties reeled and staggered in the conflicts of the forum or in the deadlier conflicts of the Held, would be to write the history of the country since that time; but that Hamilton was right and eternally right will no longer admit of serious discussion. To deny it would be to sweep from the statute books the entire criminal jurisdiction of the United States courts. Blot from the American system the Hamiltonian doctrine of the Implied Powers, and the fame of our jurisprudence would wither and perish like Jonah's gourd. The public buildings which house our officials and protect our records, the forts and batteries on our boundaries, the friendly lights which guide the mariner, the granitic walls of the great locks on the Great Lakes, through whose portals float in safety a tonnage greater and more profitable than that which rides over the waves of ocean, the stupendous works at the mouth of the Mississippi, the incessant clanking of those gigantic engines now cutting an inter-oceanic path for the maritime commerce of the world, these and much more like these would be but the successive monuments of an usurping government, and a lawless, and therefore a decadent people. Whether it be for an appropriation to maintain a range light, or to relieve the agonized people of a city whose homes have crumbled by the upheaval of the earthquake and the horrid sweep of the conflagration, all is traceable to that source of governmental authority forever residing in the implied powers of the Constitution. Hamilton had seen and known the condition of our country when it seemed, in the language of Washington, that it would resolve itself into the "withered fragments of empire." With his illustrious compatriots, he educated Patrick Henry's three millions "armed in the holy cause of liberty," and their children, to the knowledge that all liberty is worthless save liberty under the law, and effective law. He now saw the roseate blush of the nation's dawn. It enchanted his prescient and prophetic vision. Well might he have exclaimed as did old Sam Adam, when the shot of the embattled farmers rang out on that memorable April dawn so many years before, "Oh, what a glorious morning is this!" But, alas, that
"Base envy that withers at another's joy,
And hates the excellence it cannot reach,"
should so soon mark him for its own.
For two years more than a century, the mortal remains of this great man have rested in the churchyard of old Trinity. Millions of his countrymen, on crowded Broadway, annually pass in a few feet of the spot where his ashes repose. The small city where he labored, and lived, and died, has become one of the greatest on earth. Gigantic structures devoted to the trade, commerce, transportation, and banking of the world, to which his genius imparted so much, tower above the graceful spires of the old church and cast their shadows over the sward where the forefathers of the city and of the nation sleep. Across the way in a short and narrow street the wealth of this and other nations is concentered for the service and for the advancement of every interest of a mighty people. The trains, laden with their human freight, thunder hard by the lonely grave, or rumble in subways far beneath its level. The beautiful river across which so many years ago he went to meet his mortal enemy, and his fate, sends forth year after year bread to feed nations, Whose names the sleeper never heard, the manufactured necessities of life, of which the sleeper never dreamed. Not inappropriate, then, is his resting-place. Yet magnificent as are the environments of his grave, to this man who "thought continentally" there may be a vision nobler by far. It is in the happy homes of eighty millions of American people, a people whose domain stretches from the tropical frondage of Porto Rico to Alaska's frozen strand; from the granitic shores of Maine, to that wondrous archipelago of the Orient, where but lately the guns of our gallant squadron proclaimed that the genius of American civilization had come to stay. And if, as we fondly trust, the souls of those we love, who precede us, are permitted to welcome and to know those who follow, may it not be true, after all of life is over, that the young comrade and compatriot heard, as at Yorktown, the words, "The work is done and well done," from the majestic voice of the Father of his Country.
Thomas Jefferson
When the Great Ruler of the universe resolved to set his people free from Egyptian bondage, he raised up able and mighty men, to effect his glorious purposes. These he endowed with wisdom to plan, and energy to execute his noble designs. There is a most striking similarity between the history of the Israelites, bursting the chains of slavery riveted upon them by Pharaoh; and that of the American colonies, in disenthralling themselves, by the aid of Heaven, from the oppressions of the British king. Like Moses, Washington led his countrymen through the wilderness of the revolution, and planted them, when the journey was terminated, upon the promised land of freedom and independence. Like Moses, he placed his trust in the God of Hosts, and like him, he was aided and sustained by a band of sages and heroes, unrivalled in the history of the world.
In the front of this band stood Thomas Jefferson, who was born at Shadwell, Albemarle county, Virginia, on the 24th of April, 1743. His ancestors were highly respectable, and among the early emigrants to the Old Dominion. They were true republicans, in affluent circumstances, and exercised an influence that radiated to a considerable extent. Thomas was the son of Peter Jefferson, a man much esteemed in public and private life. The feelings imbibed from him by this son, were conspicuous at an early age, and decidedly of a liberal character. From his childhood, the mind of Thomas Jefferson assumed a high elevation, and took a broad and expansive view of men and things. He was educated at the college of William and Mary, at Williamsburg; and was always found at the head of his class. For assiduity and untiring industry in the exploration of the fields of science, he had no superior. He analyzed every subject that came under his investigation, closely and carefully; passing through the opening avenues of literature with an astonishing celerity. His mind became enraptured with the history of classic Greece and republican Rome, and, in early youth, his political opinions appear to have been distinctly formed, and opposed to every kind of government, tinctured with a shade of monarchy or aristocracy.
After having completed his collegiate course, he commenced the study of law under chancellor Wythe, whose liberal views were well calculated to strengthen and mature those already preponderating in the mind of Jefferson. With regard to the oppressions of the mother country, and the justice and necessity of resistance by the colonies, their kindred bosoms were in unison. By a thorough investigation of the science of law and government, Jefferson soon became prepared to enter upon the great theatre of public action, and into the service of his injured country. Planting himself upon the broad basis of Magna Charta, encircling himself within the pale of the British constitution, he demonstrated most clearly, that the ministry of the crown had long been advancing, with rapid strides, beyond the bounds of their legitimate authority, by exercising a tyrannical power over the American colonies, not delegated to them by the monarchy they corruptly represented. So conclusive and luminous were his expositions of chartered rights on the one hand, and of accumulating wrongs on the other, that he soon became the nucleus of a band of patriots, resolved on deeds of noble daring — on liberty or death.
At the age of twenty-two, he was elected to the provincial legislature, and commissioned a justice of the peace, which gave him an opportunity