cautioned John Adams not to
use the word, since "it is as unpopular in all the Middle States as
the Stamp Act itself."[1] Washington wrote from the Congress that
independence was then not "desired by any thinking man in America."[2]

[Footnote 1: E.B. Andrews, _History of the United States_, Vol. 1, p.
172.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 172.]

The differences, therefore, between the Committees of Fifty and
Fifty-one were merely political. One favoured agitation for the
purpose of arousing resistance to the King's summary methods--the
other preferred a more orderly but not less forceful way of making
known their opposition. Members of both committees were patriots in
the highest and best sense, yet each faction fancied itself the only
patriotic, public spirited and independent party.

It was during these months of discord that Alexander Hamilton, then a
lad of seventeen, astonished his listeners at the historic meeting "in
the Fields,"[3] with the cogency of his arguments and the wonderful
flights of an unpremeditated eloquence while denouncing the act of
Parliament which closed the port of Boston. Hamilton had already been
a year in America attending the Elizabethtown grammar school,
conducted under the patronage of William Livingston, soon to become
the famous war governor of New Jersey. This experience quickened the
young man's insight into the vexed relations between the Colonies and
the Crown, and shattered his English predilections in favour of the
little minds that Burke thought so ill-suited to a great empire. A
visit to Boston shortly after the "tea party" seems also to have had
the effect of crowding his mind with thoughts, deeply and
significantly freighted with the sentiment of liberty, which were soon
to make memorable the occasion of their first utterance.

[Footnote 3: City Hall Park.]

The remarkable parallel between Hamilton and the younger Pitt begins
in this year, while both are in the schoolroom. Hamilton "in the
Fields" recalls Pitt at the bar of the House of Lords, amazing his
companions with the ripe intelligence and rare sagacity with which he
followed the debate, and the readiness with which he skilfully
formulated answers to the stately arguments of the wigged and powdered
nobles. Pitt, under the tuition of his distinguished father, was
fitted for the House of Commons as boys are fitted for college at
Exeter and Andover, and he entered Parliament before becoming of age.
Hamilton's preparati