HAMILTON" district, affords excellent commercial advan- tages. The Desjardins canal, 4 m. in length, connects it with Dundas ; and the Burlington Bay canal, which cuts through the beach di- viding the bay from the lake, shortens its com- munication with Lake Ontario. The imports for the year ending June 30, 1872, amounted^ to $5,665,259; exports, $805,526, of which $597,820 was the value of agricultural pro- ducts. The number of entrances from the United States was 20.7, with an aggregate ton- nage of 33,584 ; clearances for American ports, 240, of 39,621 tons. Hamilton is the second city of Ontario in population, and the first in manufacturing industry. The manufactures embrace iron castings, machinery, agricultural implements, sewing machines, musical instru- ments, glassware, wooden ware, cotton and woollen goods, soap and candles, boots and shoes, leather, brooms, brushes, &c. There are also several saw and grist mills, a bank, and five branch banks. The city is divided into five wards, and is governed by a mayor and a board of 15 aldermen. It contains a deaf and dumb institution, two orphan asy- lums, a house of refuge, a city hospital, a con- vent, a boys' home, home for the friendless, and an industrial school. There are a fe- male college, a business college, a grammar school, several primary schools, a mechanics' institute, a reading room, three daily and six weekly newspapers, and two monthly peri- odicals. The Great Western railway company has a library of 2,000 volumes. Hamilton is the seat of an Episcopal and a Roman Catholic bishop, and contains 23 churches. The city was laid out in 1813. HAMILTON, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Lanarkshire, Scotland, near the junction of the Avon with the Clyde, 10 m. S. E. of Glasgow, with which it is connected by railway; pop. in 1871, 11,299. The most important public buildings are two fine parish churches. Manufactories of lace and muslins give employment to several thousand hands. Separated from the town by a wall and park is Hamilton palace, the seat of the duke of Ham- ilton. The surrounding grounds between the town and the Clyde comprise 1,460 acres, and are accessible to the public. A portion of the palace was built in 1591 ; but the greater part is comparatively modern. The interior decora- tions are magnificent, and the picture gallery is unsurpassed in Scotland. In the vicinity, on a rock 200 ft. above the Avon, are the ruins of Cadzow castle, the original seat of the Hamiltons; and near by are the remains of Cadzow forest, in which a herd of the original breed of wild cattle of Britain is still kept. HAMILTON, Alexander, an American states- man, born in the island of Nevis, "West Indies, Jan. 11, 1757, died in New York, July 12, 1804. His father had emigrated from Scotland and established himself in mercantile business in St. Christopher's. His mother was of French Huguenot descent; she had first been married 387 VOL. vin. 27 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 415 to a Dane named Levine, from whom she ob- tained a divorce. Hamilton's father failed in business, and passed the remainder of his life in poverty. His mother died in his childhood, but relatives of hers who resided at Santa Cruz took charge of the orphan, her only sur- viving child. There were no great advantages of education at Santa Cruz ; but, possessing the French as well as the English tongue, young Hamilton eagerly read such books in both lan- guages as fell in his way. At 12 years of age he was placed in the counting house of a mer- chant of Santa Cruz ; but this occupation was not to his taste, and in his earliest extant letter, written to a schoolfellow, he speaks with dis- gust of the "grovelling condition of a clerk," and wishes for a war. But though he did not like his employment, he applied himself to it with characteristic assiduity; and the practical knowledge thus acquired was doubtless a step- ping stone to his subsequent reputation as a financier. He began to use his pen early, and among other things he wrote a description of a hurricane by which St. Christopher's was visited in August, 1772. This description, pub- lished in a newspaper of that island, attracted so much attention as to induce his friends to comply with his wish for a better education than could be had at home, and to send him to New York for that purpose. He was first placed in a grammar school at Elizabethtown, N. J., where he enjoyed the acquaintance of the fam- ilies of William Livingston and Elias Boudinot. After a few months he entered King's (now Columbia) college. Besides the regular studies of an undergraduate, he attended lectures on anatomy with the idea of becoming a physi- cian. While he was thus engaged the quarrel with the mother country came to a crisis. Some differences in the city of New York as to the selection of delegates to the proposed continental congress led to a public meeting, July 6, 1774. Hamilton attended, and made a speech which first drew attention to him. Not long after he became a correspondent of " Holt's Journal," the organ of the New York patriots. A pamphlet having appeared attacking the proceedings of the continental congress, writ- ten by Samuel Seabury, afterward the first bishop of the American branch of the church of England, Hamilton replied to it in another pamphlet, written with so much ability that it was ascribed to Jay. This reply drew out an answer, to which Hamilton rejoined in a sec- ond pamphlet. These pamphlets, and another which he published in June, 1775, on the " Quebec Bill," gave him standing and consid- eration among the popular leaders. Mean- while he had joined a volunteer corps, and applied himself to obtain information and in- struction as an artillerist. In March, 1776, though yet but 19 years of age, he obtained, on the recommendation of Gen. Schuyler, then in command of the northern department, a com- mission as captain in an artillery company raised by the state of N"ew York. The main
