be conversant with history, finance, and science; he must know everything, like Gladstone, and he must have at heart the great interests of a nation; he must be a man of experience and wisdom and reason; he must be both enlightened and patriotic, merging his own personal ambition in the good of his country,—­an oracle and sage whose utterances are received with attention and respect.  To be a statesman demands the highest maturity of reason, far-reaching views, and the power of taking in the interests of a whole country rather than of a section.  But to be a successful politician a man may be ignorant, narrow, and selfish; most probably he will be artful, dissembling, going in for the winning side, shaking hands with everybody, profuse in promises, bland, affable, ready to do anything for anybody, and seeking the interests and flattering the prejudices of his own constituency, indifferent to the great questions on which the welfare of a nation rests, if only his own private interests be advanced.  All politicians are not so small and contemptible; many are honest, as far as they can see, but can see only petty details, and not broad effects.  Mere politicians,—­observe, I qualify what I say,—­mere politicians resemble statesmen, intellectually, as pedants resemble scholars of large culture, comprehensive intellects, and varied knowledge; they will consider a date, or a name, or a comma, of more importance than the great universe, which no one can ever fully and accurately explore.

I have given but a short notice of Hamilton as a lawyer, because his services as a statesman are of so much greater importance, especially to the student of history.  His sphere became greatly enlarged when he entered into those public questions on which the political destiny of a nation rests.  He was called to give a direction to the policy of the young government that had arisen out of the storms of revolution,—­a policy which must be carried out when the nation should become powerful and draw upon itself the eyes of the civilized world.  “Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”  It was the privilege and glory of Hamilton to be one of the most influential of all the men of his day in bending the twig which has now become so great a tree.  We can see his hand in the distinctive features of our Constitution, and especially in that financial policy which extricated the nation from the poverty and embarrassments bequeathed by the war, and which, on the whole, has been the policy of the Government from his day to ours.  Greater statesmen may arise than he, but no future statesman will ever be able to shape a national policy as he has done.  He is one of the great fathers of the Republic, and was as efficient in founding a government and a financial policy, as Saint Augustine was in giving shape to the doctrines of the Church in his age, and in mediaeval ages.  Hamilton was therefore a benefactor to the State, as Augustine was to the Church.