BOOKS.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON.*
Mn. OLIVER'S monograph upon Alexander Hamilton appears at a fortunate moment. Hamilton is not only one of the three greatest figures in American history, he is one of the master-minds—in Talleyrand's opinion, the master-mind—of the greatest epoch in modern politics. And the problem which be solved has so many points of resemblance to the task which to-day confronts the British people that Mr. Oliver's narrative has an interest far beyond that of the common political biography. He writes of one of the most brilliant and tragically fated of men, and he writes also of a life-work akin to our own,—the consolidation of scattered States into a nation. In America's case the work began with the struggle for independence, and was not completed till the close of the war between North and South. English readers are apt to be misled as to the way in which American union was effected. They imagine that after the withdrawal of British troops "a unanimous and .patriotic impulse, working in half-molten metal, wrought and fashioned a noble constitu- tion." The truth is that difficulties in the way of union came not from without but from within, and the true greatness of Washington and Hamilton consists in their having forced unity and good government upon their unwilling and distracted countrymen.
The details of Hamilton's precocious youth are familiar to most readers. Born in 1757, he began life as a clerk in a store in the Leeward Islands. At fifteen he Game to New York
* Alexander Hamilton: an Essay on American Union. By Frederick Scott Oliver. London: A. Constable and Co. [12s. 6d. net.] • toicellegevut eightbeti:he Srloa soldieriniticAnteeicati'AfLy, and vent pidt of his six years of service as Military Secretary tai" Wasengton. To have been a Lieutenant-Colonel at twenty, and to have earned for his gallantry at Yorktown one of Washington's infrequent eulogies, were no bad prepara- tion for a career. At twenty-five he was called to the Bar, and speedily won a large practice. But politics were his absorbing interest, and as a Member of the House of Representatives and the most intimate of Washington's friends he found the chance h8 desired. The war had shown the weakness of Congress as an executive power, and its close saw the independence and disorganisation of the thirteen States intensified. There was no central brain to think out the common problems or central authority to enforce the solution. The Army was almost in revolt, the Treasury was empty, and threats of repudiation had reduced the public credit to zero. "It was believed," says Mr. Oliver, "that a federal power could be preserved by occasional outbursts of high emotion. It was forgotten that a govern- ment depending upon emotion for its authority is more likely in the end to be destroyed by that incalculable force than to be saved by it" Hamilton, with the clear eye of genius, began by concentrating his efforts upon the devising of a Constitution. The first step was the Convention of Annapolis, where only five States were represented. Next year came the Convention of Philadelphia, where after much dispute a scheme was accepted which, though far from Hamilton's own idea, was yet something to work upon. Mr. Oliver notes that Hamilton's object was the British Constitution as George III. wished to emend it, and that his opponents attacked it from the point of- view of State rights, not because it was in conflict with democratic principles. His aim was a strong Executive and a balance of authority—an Assembly elected every three years, a Senate elected for life, and a Governor chosen for life to whom should belong the right of veto on legislation and the supreme executive control—in a word, an elective Monarchy. The Philadelphia Constitution fell short of this, but Hamilton accepted it as something on account. It was ratified by the States after a hard struggle, which produced among other things that masterpiece of political theory, the Federalist, and Hamilton set himself to the more arduous task of getting the new system into working order. "A constitution was to him but a skeleton ; and had it been put together by the wisest men, in the coolest hour, there would still have been no virtue in it until it was inspired with life. Its strength lay-not in the written words, but in the tradition that was still to seek. The first administration would have greater powers in moulding the destinies of the nation than the whole Convention of Philadelphia voting unanimously."
Washington was the first President, with Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury ; and " out of nothing the whole machine of government had to be called into existence." The brain of the Administration was Hamilton's, and few statesmen have ever had a harder task. He had to make 'the country first solvent, then prosperous ; he had so to guide her foreign policy that she should keep outside European complications ; above all, he had to cherish a nascent unity till it became a plant which would defy the winds of opposition. In his five years' work he succeeded in the first two aims, succeeded so effectually that his creed became insensibly part of the creed of his avowed opponents. American fiscal policy was his creation ; the Monroe doctrine was of his devising ; and when the final struggle for the Union came Lincoln was only fighting the battle which he had begun seventy years before. His successors adopted his maxims, but parodied them in the adoption. "A certain bustling assurance, with all its loud talk of business principles, does not reach the high level of his energy, while it misses many things which were firmly held in his luminous and well-proportioned view." We have no space to examine the work of these years in detail. Mr. Oliver has given a most lucid and interesting account of it, and has set against it with a true dramatic instinct the flimsy platitudes of that other school of American policy which was born during that time. The fight between Hamilton and Jefferson is no mere rivalry of politicians, but the contest of eternal types of statecraft. Hamilton was the keen student of reality, Jefferson a political Don Quixote, "with this differ- ence, that half the world shared his illusions." Jefferson was the tree democrat, making a fetish of transient popular
following and not leading the people. He had a genuine emotional craze for certain dogmas, loving "every- thing that was ' free' or that called itself ' free ' with the passionate unreasonableness of a collector of Stuart relics:. And yet he was also an opportunist, as all devotees of popular applause must be. "He takes rank among the men who succeeded only in success, but had nothing to show for it at the end, save only success." Both men were built on a large scale, but the one was assuredly a statesman, and the other as assuredly not. Mr. Oliver is perfectly aware of Jefferson's power "There was a quality in him which Hamilton and other great statesmen of the constructive school have usually lacked. It is the old battle of the moralists against the evangelists, of salva- tion by works or by grace. Jefferson believed in humanity without any reservations, and the causes of his great influence must therefore be sought for in his faith and not in his acts. Hamilton disbelieved in humanity, unless it had the support of strong laws and the leadership of great men. To the people, craving for an affectionate confidence, these limitations implied distrust"
Mr. Oliver's picture of Jefferson is one of the most brilliant studies in political psychology that we have read for many days. But it is excelled as a portrait by his sketch of Aaron Burr, who became Hamilton's antagonist when Jefferson had reached the Olympus of the Presidency. Burr was no theorist and a very doubtful democrat: he was that im- perishable type, the politician. He cared nothing for the ends, but only for the game, the cool, self-possessed, well- mannered arriviste who makes a cult of his career. The duel in which Hamilton fell was the result of a radical clash of temperaments, the conviction in Burr's case that but for Hamilton his future was clear, and in Hamilton's case that the man was a danger to the State. " Hamilton, Jefferson, and Burr are three distinctive types of public men. Hamilton was a type of the statesman, Jefferson of the sophist, and Burr of the politician. Their enmity was fundamental." The portrait of Burr, as we have said, is a very remarkable achievement. We are not sure that it is the real Burr, and we are inclined to suspect that Mr. Oliver's sense of the dramatic has led him to strengthen certain lines for the sake of contrast. But it remains a picture of singular attraction and power.
Like Pitt, Hamilton was cast, he did not grow: but unlike Pitt, he was cast in the mould of a young man:— "For youth," says Mr. Oliver, "was the distinguishing note of his career. His triumph was the triumph of youth ; his failure the failure of youth. His personal charm and exuberant con- fidence did not follow the normal course, mellowing in middle life into a genial tolerance, a quieter wisdom, a less vehement but more masterful efficiency Like a boy who has dreamed a dream, but cannot prevail with mon to accept it in all its glorious symmetry, he came to despair of the consequences to a world containing so much obstruction and so many fools."
His undying youth gave him a vitality and courage and imagination to which few men concerned with the dry structure of the State have been able to attain. He was singularly free from all vanity and mean ambition, and in consequence be cared not at all for popularity. "The successful politician is ever something of a sentimentalist; an astute sharer in the joys, sorrows, and emotions of the people, even in those which are least profound and permanent; and be is not, therefore, to be denounced as insincere. But the wise statesman most ever be prepared to accept loneliness for a bride and to cultivate fortitude upon a rock." In intellect he towered beyond his contemporaries. As a lawyer he belongs to the small fraternity of great lawyers, one of the closest of human corporations. He was a great financier—we commend Mr. Oliver's acute analysis of the meaning of financial talent—a great Foreign Minister, a great constructive statesman in every department of public life. But especially he had the rare gift of political foresight, which marks off genius from the moat admirable talent. He saw the battle that had to be fought, but he died before the victory was attained; and it was left for Lincoln to complete his work. "The thing which commands our admiration is that three-quarters of a century later a man should have arisen, the equal of Washington in character, of Hamilton in perspicacity, who had the courage to maintain the Union even at this staggering price."
The final chapters are devoted to a comparison of the conditions which confronted Hamilton with those before the British people to-day, and an eloquent sermon on the text of Imperial unity. Mr. Oliver's book seems to us the most
brilliant piece of political biography which has appeared in England for many years. A clear and vigorous style, wit, urbanity, a high sense of the picturesque, and a remarkable power of character-drawing raise much of it to the rank of a literary masterpiece. But he is also the propagandist with a creed to preach and a moral to point, and this dual character is apt now and then to spoil the proportion of his narrative. For ourselves, however, we do not regret one sentence of these digressions, for from start to finish the argument never loses ,grip, and many of the generalisations are as wisely conceived as they are brilliantly expressed. Whatever be the political standpoint from which the reader approaches the book, he will be forced under the stimulus of its dialectic to reflect upon the faith that is in him.
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