Chancellor James Kent. and the intrepidity of the sages of the Revolution), and some other gentlemen of the profession, whose names I do not now recollect, attended the Court. I was struck by the clear, elegant and fluent style and commanding manner of Hamilton. At that day everything in law seemed to be new. Our judges were not remarkable for law learning. We had no precedents of our own to guide us. English books of practice as well as English decisions were resorted to and studied with the scrupulous reverence due oracles. Nothing was settled in our courts. Every point of practice had to be investigated, and its application to our courts and institutions questioned and tested. Mr. Hamilton thought it necessary to produce authorities to demonstrate . and to guide the power of the court, even in the now familiar case of putting off a case for the circuit, and to show that the power was exercised, as he expressed it, in sound discretion and for the furtherance of justice. He never made an argument in court in any case without displaying his habits of thinking, and resorting at once to some well founded principle of law, and drawing his deductions logic ally from his premises. Law was always treated by him as a science founded on established principles. His manners were gentle, affable and kind, and he appeared to be free, liberal and courteous in all his professional intercourse. This was my impression at the time."
of matter and thoroughness of treatment, and especially valuable as an historical docu ment on account of the position, personal relation, and special knowledge of the writer. The alleged cause of the Burr-Hamilton duel was a clause in a letter signed by Dr. Charles D. Cooper, which read as follows : "I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has ex pressed of Mr. Burr." Hamilton, in reply to Burr's letter demanding an " acknowledg ment or denial of the use " of such expression, wrote to the effect that he found the opinion in question to be founded on these words : "General Hamilton and Judge Kent have de clared in substance that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government." And it is a fact that for some time Burr hesitated, undecided which one to challenge first. Kent spent some time with Hamilton at the latter's countryseat " The Grange," just before the dawn lifted on that notable eleventh day of July, 1804, when in a quiet nook sheltered by the heights of Weehawken, the great Federalist met his death. This Hamilton letter is really a memor abilia covering some eighty-five pages in typewriting, and which he divided into three parts : First, his personal knowledge of Hamilton from 1782 to the call of the Con vention in 1787; Second, Hamilton's ser vice in relation to the origin and adoption of the Federal Constitution, and third, his subsequent life. I shall quote, in part only, his estimate of Hamilton as a lawyer and man : —
Chancellor Kent was not the man to in dulge in extravagant phrases or periods or nate with elaborate emotion and meaningless enthusiasm. He had spent his honored days in weighing facts and probing principles. We can appreciate, therefore, the full value of his words pertaining to Hamilton, who, when living, was either loved or hated, but never treated with the scorn of belittling indiffer ence. And these are his words : —
"In the summer of 1784 Col. Hamilton at tended the Circuit Court at Poughkeepsie and I had then an opportunity for the first time of seeing him at the bar as a counselor addressing the court and jury. It was an interesting county circuit. Col. I,awrence of New York, Peter W. Yates of Albany, Egbert Benson (my revered preceptor and who still lives a venerable monu ment of the wisdom, the integrity, the patriotism
"I knew General Hamilton well. His life and actions for the course of twenty- two years had engaged and fixed my attention. For the last six years of his life he was arguing cases before me. I have been sensibly struck in a thousand instances with his habitual reverence for tmth; his candor, his ardent attachment to civil liberty; his indignation at oppression of every kind; his abhorrence of every semblance of fraud; his
