Or again, in answer to a second application, "My object, in the course of the present great contest, neither has been nor will be either rank or money. I am persuaded that I can be more useful to the state in the office I now hold than in the one alluded to, and, therefore, think it my duty to continue in it."—Vol. i., p. 73. The statesman who decides a question in such spirit, we doubt not, decides it right. On the ninth of September, 1777, Mr. Jay having been re-appointed, the first term of the supreme court of the STATE of New York was held, when the chief justice proceeded to deliver, under the new constitution, his primary charge. Though in a small country town, yet was it a scene of high dignity and interest:

"A government venerable for its antiquity," are the words of Mr. William Jay, "and endeared to its subjects by the freedom and happiness it conferred, had been renounced for its recent oppression and injustice, and a new government had just been established by the people amid the tumult of arms and in the presence of a powerful and infuriated enemy. The success of the undertaking was still apparently dubious. At such time and under such circumstances was the TEMPLE OF JUSTICE, which had long been closed, re-opened, and he who had been one of the earliest asserters of his country's rights, was seen, full of faith and zeal, ministering at the altar."p. 79.

His address to the grand jury was one of eloquent, yet tempered patriotism:

"It affords me, gentlemen," said he, "very sensible pleasure to congratulate you on the dawn of that free, mild, and equal government, which now begins to rise and break from amid those clouds of anarchy, confusion and licentiousness, which the arbitrary and violent domination of Great Britain had spread, in greater or less degree, throughout this and the other American states. This is one of those signal instances in which Divine Providence has made the tyranny of princes instrumental in breaking the chains of their subjects, and rendered the most inhuman designs productive of the best consequences to those against whom they were intended."— Charge, vol. i., p. 80.

From his official duties, which were, under that constitution, (for it is since amended,) legislative as well as judicial, Mr. Jay found little time for repose. What he could command was spent in the duties of filial piety, "devoted," says his son," to his aged and surviving parent."

"to

With what kindly personal feelings Jay regarded the unfortunate men whom he was bound to hold publicly as enemies, it is pleasing also to contemplate, more especially as with his stern mind it might otherwise be a matter dubious. Two evidences of it here appear in the narrative, towards friends, it is true, but still such claims as selfish or narrowminded patriotism would gladly have cast off. To one, (a royalist officer,) prisoner in Hartford jail, he writes: "How far your situation may be comfortable and easy I know not; it is my wish, and shall be my endeavor, that it be as much so as is consistent with the interest of that great cause to which I have devoted every thing I hold dear in this world. I have taken the liberty of requesting Mr. Samuel Broome immediately to advance you one hundred dollars on my account."Letter to Colonel James De Lancy, p. 84. To another, a prisoner on parole, he thus speaks in consolatory language: "Misfortunes, and severe ones, have been your lot. The reflection that they happened in the course of a Providence that errs not, has consolation in it. I fear, too, that your sensibility is wounded by other circumstances, but these are wounds not to be probed in a letter. You mistake much if you suppose the frequency of your letters or applications troublesome to me. I assure you it would give me pleasure were opportunities of being useful to you more frequent than either. God bless you and give you health." This letter, which had begun with a "Dear Sir," concludes with, "Dear Peter, affectionately yours."- Letter to Peter Van Schaick, p. 85.

But a new mark of public confidence now awaited him. As judge of the supreme court, Mr. Jay was restrained by the constitution from holding any other office except that of delegate to congress on a special occasion. That "casus" the legislature determined now to exist in the conflicting claims of New York and New Hampshire, to what at present constitutes the state of Vermont, so that, without vacating his seat on the bench, Mr. Jay was forthwith returned to congress. "He was received," says his biographer, " as an old and valued friend, (after an absence of more than two years,) and three days after, on the resignation of Mr. Laurens, was elected its president." Deeming the official attendance on congress thus required of him inconsistent with his judicial duties, Mr. Jay, with characteristic conscientiousness, at once resigned his seat on the bench, and persisted in it, notwithstanding the governor's earnest request that he would

recall it, so little did any thing weigh with him, whether of honors, or other's opinion, compared with his own sense of duty. Nor thus far only. In his letter to the governor he remarks: "The legislature may, perhaps, in consequence of this step, be inclined to keep me here. (After the current term.) On this head I must inform you, that the situation of my father's family is such that I can no longer reconcile it to my ideas of filial duty to be absent from them, unless my brother should be so circumstanced as to pay them the necessary attention." To his brother, at the same time, he thus wrote: "Make up your mind on this matter: if you cannot pay necessary attention to Fishkill, prevent my election, and let me know your intention by the first opportunity." "Happily," says his 66 son, such arrangements were made as relieved him from the necessity of sacrificing his public to his filial duties."

As if in proof to the nation of a confidence unlimited in their new president, congress, shortly after his election, took the unusual step of imposing upon the chair the responsibility of a report on the prospects of the country, deputing him, with power, in their name to address a letter to the confederation on the subject of the finances, and the duty of the states touching them. Of the urgent need of some remedy for a depreciated currency, we may take Washington's strong language in his letter to Jay urging it. "The depreciation of it is got to so alarming a point, that a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions." "Few documents of the old congress," says a competent judge," are more distinguished for perspicuity, elegance and patriotism, than this letter." (Vol. ii., Appendix.)

The Vermont question was now also placed authoritatively in his hands, the resolutions introduced by him adopted, and himself empowered to remit to Governor Clinton a satisfactory adjudication of this long embroiled controversy. It was given in the spirit of a Christian statesman, and gained the usual triumph of good sense and disinterestedness over passion and party interest, standing forth a monument of the governing influence of such principles. But higher scenes are now opening. On 27th September, 1779, congress deeming it advisable to open negotiations with Spain under their rights reserved by secret article in the French treaty, (concluded February, 1778,) determined on despatching thither a minister plenipotentiary; and for this important mission at

once selected their own president. On receiving this appointment Jay resigned the chair, which, from the day he first occupied it, ten months previously, he had not even once quitted. Such was his notion of the duties of official station.

On a wider field, and under higher responsibilities, was Jay now to be called on to redeem his pledge of "holding all save conscience at the call of his country." What were

his thoughts in entering on it may be best taken from his private journal at the time. "I have long been convinced," are his words, "that human fame was a bubble, which, whether swelled by the breath of the wise, the good, the ignorant or malicious, must burst with the globe we inhabit. I am not among the number of those who give it a place among the motives of their actions. Neither courting nor dreading the public opinion on the one hand, nor disregarding it on the other, I joined myself to the first asserters of the American cause, because I thought it my duty, and because I considered caution and neutrality, however secure, as being no less wrong than dishonorable."-Journal.

Into the history of this Spanish mission we shall not enter; it is familiar to all students of American history. We will but note the characteristic traits it brings forth of Jay's mind. He went, accompanied by his wife, who, to use her own words, "In all their perils, incited by his amiable example, gave fear to the winds, and cheerfully resigned herself to the disposal of the Almighty." His first letter to the president of congress was a characteristic one. It was a draft from Martinique, into which island the national ship had been driven by stress of weather. "I have done," says he, "what perhaps I shall be blamed for, but my pride as an American, and my feelings as a man, were not to be resisted." The draft (no doubt an inconvenient one) was for a hundred guineas, drawn on the fund pointed out for the payment of his own salary. Its proceeds he divided among the officers of the ship, in order that they might not "sneak," as phrased, when thrown into the society of the French officers, with whom they were there associating. Now we deem this a striking anecdote, not so much for its generosity, though in that light no trivial act, as in its sympathies with a worldly feeling that he himself individually felt not.

But a higher and harder question met him at his very entrance on his mission. Congress, with the desperation of bankruptcy, had, even before knowing of his safe arrival,

much less waiting to hear of his success, proceeded to empower their treasurer to draw bills on Mr. Jay, payable six months after date, to the amount of half a million of dollars. These began to come in soon after the American minister's arrival, and at a court which greeted him coldly, and gave him neither money nor promises to justify his acceptance of them. What course was he to take in regard of them? A prudent man would certainly not have touched them—a politic man would have cried out against the government that thus disgraced him, while a cautious man would have sunk under the difficulty. Mr. Jay was prudent, and politic, and cautious, yet he did neither. He looked higher for his rule. It was evidently a crisis in his country's fortunes, and an act upon which she was driven by a life-struggle. Refuse the bills, and her credit was irreparably ruined, at least in Europe, and her prospects even at home immeasurably darkened. Accept them, and there was yet a chance for her safety. It was but throwing his own individual fortune into the scale of his country's, and who knew but that sacrifice might turn it. If her cause was ruined, he was ruined, but if she was safe, he was safe. Under this view he hesitated not in his choice, and thus redeemed nobly his pledge given. Without one dollar of the government in hand, or the promise of one given, he proceeded to accept bills as they came upon himaccepted all that came-staking name, and character, and fortune, against them. Curtius-like, he leaped into the yawning gulf, and his country was saved. This step once taken, it is worthy of note the skilful diplomatic use he made of it. These unauthorized bills of congress on the credit of his mission, he urged upon the Spanish government as the highest proof of American confidence in the generous friendship of their ally. His own acceptances he turned into a similar appeal to their national pride, "lest they, as well as he, should stand disgraced in the eyes of the European world." Suffice it to say, it was so far successful as that few men, we think, would have attained so much, no man more, from the hands of Spain as she then was, a government alike dilatory and feeble in her movements, and equally overbearing and selfish in her policy. Of her negotiator, however, the Count D'Yranda, Mr. Jay ever spoke personally with great respect, as the man of highest talent he had met with abroad.

Of Jay's merit in this act much has been said and written;