e policy of protection in
unhesitating obedience to the voice of the people. The first result of
this Report was the great manufacturing interests of Paterson, New
Jersey, which celebrated their centennial a few years ago. Paterson was
Hamilton's personal selection, and it still throbs with something of his
own energy.

Meanwhile he was being elected an honorary member of colleges and
societies of arts and letters, and persecuted by portrait painters and
sculptors. Every honour, public and private, was thrust upon him, and
each new victory was attended by a public banquet and a burst of popular
applause. He was apparently invulnerable, confounding his opponents and
enemies without effort. Never had there been such a conquering hero;
even the Virginian trio began to wonder uneasily if he were but mortal,
if he were not under some mighty and invisible protection. As for the
Federalists, they waxed in enthusiasm and devotion. His career was at
its zenith. No man in the United States was--nor has been since--so
loved and so hated, both in public and in private life. Even
Washington's career had not been more triumphant, and hardly so
remarkable; for he was an American born, had always had a larger measure
of popular approval, and never had discovered the faculty of raising
such bitter and powerful enemies. Nor had he won an extraordinary
reputation until he was long past Hamilton's present age. Certainly he
had never exhibited such unhuman precocity.

But although Hamilton had, by this time, extancy to suffice any man, and
was hunted to his very lair by society, he had no thought of resting on
his labours. He by no means regarded himself as a demi-god, nor the
country as able to take care of itself. He prepared, and sent to
Congress in rapid succession, his Reports on Estimates for Receipts and
Expenditures for 1791-92, on Loans, on Duties, on Spirits, on Additional
Supplies for 1792, on Remission of Duties, and on the Public Debt.

Nor did his labours for the year confine itself to reports. On August
4th, his patience with the scurrilities of Freneau's _Gazette_ came to
an end, and he published in Fenno's journal the first of a series of
papers that Jefferson, in the hush of Monticello, read with the
sensations of those forefathers who sat on a pan of live coals for the
amusement of Indian warriors. Hamilton was thorough or nothing. He had
held himself in as long as could be expected of any mortal less
perfected in his