Note 55 — Chapter XIV · 1837–1840. (continued 2)

There is, perhaps, no other of the writings of Hamilton which more strikingly exhibits his marvellous powers, the perspicuity of his style, and his faculty of illustrating an intricate subject, than this report. When he made it he was at the age of thirty-three. It reads as if he had passed a long life in some country where banks had been established for centuries, and in some official connection with them, or in mercantile pursuits that had brought him into daily experience of their operations; yet he had never been out of the United States since he came from the Island of St. Christopher, at the age of fifteen; there had been but three banks in this country when he wrote this report; and every part of his life that had not been passed in the army, in Congress, or in the proceedings to form and establish the Constitution of the United States, had been employed in the practice of the law. This master-piece of exposition may be read with delight by any person of taste, such are the grace, precision, force and completeness with which he handles his subject. We need not wonder that it carried conviction among the members of the body to which it was addressed.