The characters of the leading generals were maligned, even that of the general-in-chief; trade and all industries were paralyzed; the credit of the States was at the lowest ebb; there were universal discontents; there were unforeseen difficulties which had never been anticipated; Congress was nearly powerless, a sort of advisory board rather than a legislature; the States were jealous of Congress and of each other; there was a general demoralization; there was really no central power strong enough to enforce the most excellent measures; the people were poor; demagogues sowed suspicion and distrust; labor was difficult to procure; the agricultural population was decimated; there was no commerce; people lived on salted meats, dried fish, baked beans, and brown bread; all foreign commodities were fabulously dear; there was universal hardship and distress; and all these evils were endured amid foreign contempt and political disintegration,—­a sort of moral chaos difficult to conceive.  It was amid these evils that our Revolutionary fathers toiled and suffered.  It was against these that Hamilton brought his great genius to bear.

At the age of twenty-three, after having been four years in the family of Washington as his adviser rather than subordinate, Hamilton, doubtless ambitious, and perhaps elated by a sense of his own importance, testily took offence at a hasty rebuke on the part of the General and resigned his situation.  Loath was Washington to part with such a man from his household.  But Hamilton was determined, and tardily he obtained a battalion, with the brevet rank of general, and distinguished himself in those engagements which preceded the capture of Lord Cornwallis; and on the surrender of this general,—­feeling that the war was virtually ended,—­he withdrew altogether from the army, and began the study of law at Albany.  He had already married the daughter of General Schuyler, and thus formed an alliance with a powerful family.  After six months of study he was admitted to the Bar, and soon removed to New York, which then contained but twenty-five thousand inhabitants.

His legal career was opened, like that of Cicero and Erskine, by a difficult case which attracted great attention and brought him into notice.  In this case he rendered a political service as well as earned a legal fame.  An action was brought by a poor woman, impoverished by the war, against a wealthy British merchant, to recover damages for the use of a house he enjoyed when the city was occupied by the enemy.  The action was founded on a recent statute of the State of New York, which authorized proceedings for trespass by persons who had been driven from their homes by the invasion of the British.  The plaintiff therefore had the laws of New York on her side, as well as popular sympathies; and her claim was ably supported by the attorney-general.  But it involved a grave constitutional question, and conflicted with the articles of peace which the Confederation had