Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/432

412 institutions include the Hamilton and western district college, the academy, and the Alexandra college for ladies, besides a state school with accommodation for 500 pupils. It possesses a fine race-course covering 120 acres, and pastoral and agricultural exhibitions are held annually, the surrounding district being chiefly devoted to sheep- farming. The population of the town and suburbs on the 1st January 1879 was estimated at 4400. The railway from Melbourne to Portland passes through the town.  

LEXANDER HAMILTON, the ablest American jurist and statesman of the early constitutional era of the United States, was born at the island of Nevis, one of the Antilles under the dominion of England, on January 11, 1757. His father was a Scotch emigrant who had settled at St Christopher, where he engaged in mercantile business. His mother was the daughter of a Huguenot named Faucette, a prosperous physician of Nevis. She had been the wife of a Mr Irvine, also a physician, and during a brief married life dwelt at St Christopher ; but, owing to faults of his, she appears to have been driven to procure the judicial dissolution of the marriage, after which she returned to her father s home at Nevis, and there married James Hamilton. She bore to him many sons, of whom none but Thomas and Alexander lived to maturity. Alexander, the youngest, was called after his paternal grandfather, who described himself &quot; of Grange,&quot; which is said to have been the family seat in Ayrshire, Scotland. The master of Grange married, in 1730, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Pollock ; and young Hamilton, when he had risen to fame and station, said, &quot; My blood is as good as that of those who plume themselves upon their ancestry.&quot; He styled bis suburban residence, near New York, &quot; the Grange.&quot; His mother died while he was still a child, but not before he was capable of receiving and preserving distinct recollections of her. He derived from her an independent spirit, energy, self-reliance, and a disposition for metaphy sical inquiries ; and these qualities were conspicuous from an early age. His father s business misfortunes casting the boy upon the care of some of the mother s relatives, he was taken by them to their home at St Croix, and there at school he first evinced that proficiency which marked him throughout his career. The opportunities for school train ing were at that time very limited at St Croix, and when, in his thirteenth year, he entered the counting-house of Mi- Nicholas Cruger, at that port, he had already received all the benefit such schools were able to impart. This was in the autumn of 1769. In less than a year he was capable of more than clerkly duty, and Mr Cruger, going on a foreign journey, left him in sole charge of the mercantile house. His business correspondence during this time, and the prosperity which attended the affairs, show that Mr Cruger s confidence was not misplaced. This practical acquaintance with mercantile affairs was to be most serviceable to Hamilton. In the methodical and energetic management of matters of state, and in the prudent care of weighty interests, the influence of the knowledge and experience acquired by him in the counting-house at St Croix is notable. During these three years he was the eame close student that his after years more fully reveal. He read standard books, which laid open the theories of value and of trade, thinking out to feasible methods how those theories might be advantageously applied to the daily work he had in hand. He read history, poetry, and philosophy. The French language became familiar to him by its general use in society and in the transactions of commerce, and he always wrote it with accuracy and elegance, and spoke it fluently and with the accent of native speech. The Rev. Hugh Knox, D.D., an Irishman, a divine of the Presby terian Church, a scholar of distinction honoured as such by the university of Glasgow, was Hamilton s first adequate preceptor, and was the first to discover the rich resources and useful tendencies of his intellectual and moral character. Under his friendly and gratuitous tutor ship Hamilton supplied many parts in which his education was deficient. But the boy had aims beyond where he was ; and when an incident, trivial in itself, led to an arrangement by which a more liberal education was opened to him, he left the West Indies, in October 1772, and pro ceeded to New York. There, aided by letters from his friend Dr Knox, he made the acquaintance of some of the leading men in that and the adjoining province of New Jersey. A year at the grammar school at Elizabethtown in the latter province proved sufficient to prepare him for the collegiate course, and in the spring of 1774 he entered as a student the King s (now Columbia) College, and, by special privilege, pursued the usual studies according to a plan which he laid out for himself. When, in 1774, the enforcement of the Boston &quot;Port Bill&quot; aroused even the most moderate in the other colonies to sympathize with the province of Massachusetts Bay, Hamilton studied the political questions relating to the controversy between the colonies and the parliament of England with his habitual research and enlightened reason ing. He was convinced that his duty as an Englishman required him to take part with the colonists against the assertion of the &quot; omnipotence of parliament,&quot; The famous tract by Lord Somers entitled The Judgment of whole Kingdoms and Nations, ttc., which repudiates this as a thing unknown to the law of England, was republished in 1773 at Philadelphia, and widely circulated throughout the provinces, in aid of the cause of colonial resistance. Its effect upon the mind of Hamilton is to be observed in his writings of this time. With his usual ardour he now busied himself in public dis cussion. Before his eighteenth year ended his reputation as an orator and writer was established. His chief opponent at this period was the distinguished divine Samuel Seabury, who a few years later (1783) was consecrated in Scotland the first bishop of the United States of America. The fame of their debates spread over the whole country, and Hamilton was the acknowledged &quot; oracle &quot; of the party of moderation, with which he acted. While still a collegian he joined the military of the pro vince of New York, and began as the captain of its first company of artillery employed in the continental service. To qualify himself for such a position he had, under the immediate instruction of an experienced soldier and officer, not only studied the theoretic art of war but engaged with others in receiving daily for several months practical lessons in the field-drill. He was active with his company of artillerists at the battle on Long Island, at Harlem Plains, at Chatterton s Hill, New Brunswick, Trenton, and Princeton. At Harlem Heights he first attracted the attention of Washington, and again at New Brunswick excited the commander s admiration by the courage and skill with which he held in check the advance of the British forces, while the American army was retreating toward the Delaware. When the army went, in January 1777, into winter quarters at Morristown, Hamilton, now grown in the friendship and confidence of Washington, resigned his com mand, became Washington s private secretary, and was raised to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Hamilton remained on the staff until April 1781, when an unusual and hasty warmth of temper on both sides led to the severance of this par ticular connexion, but their mutual friendship remained 