The whole question was likely to depend on the decision of New York.  He felt the full importance of the crisis; and the reports of his speeches, imperfect as they probably are, are yet lasting monuments to his genius and patriotism.  He saw at last his hopes fulfilled; he saw the Constitution adopted, and the government under it established and organized.  The discerning eye of Washington immediately called him to that post, which was far the most important in the administration of the new system.  He was made Secretary of the Treasury; and how he fulfilled the duties of such a place, at such a time, the whole country perceived with delight and the whole world saw with admiration.  He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth.  He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.  The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United States, as it burst forth from the conceptions of ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

Your recollections, Gentlemen, your respect, and your affections, all conspire to bring before you, at such a time as this, another great man, now too numbered with the dead.  I mean the pure, the disinterested, the patriotic JOHN JAY.  His character is a brilliant jewel in the sacred treasures of national reputation.  Leaving his profession at an early period, yet not before he had singularly distinguished himself in it, his whole life, from the commencement of the Revolution until his final retirement, was a life of public service.  A member of the first Congress, he was the author of that political paper which is generally acknowledged to stand first among the incomparable productions of that body;[1] productions which called forth that decisive strain of commendation from the great Lord Chatham, in which he pronounced them not inferior to the finest productions of the master states of the world.  Mr. Jay had been abroad, and he had also been long intrusted with the difficult duties of our foreign correspondence at home.  He had seen and felt, in the fullest measure and to the greatest possible extent, the difficulty of conducting our foreign affairs honorably and usefully, without a stronger and more perfect domestic union.  Though not a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution, he was yet present while it was in session, and looked anxiously for its result.  By the choice of this city, he had a seat in the State Convention, and took an active and zealous part for the adoption of the Constitution.  On the organization of the new government, he was selected by Washington to be the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and surely the high and most responsible duties of that station could not have been trusted to abler or safer hands.  It is the duty of that tribunal, one of equal importance and delicacy, to decide constitutional questions, occasionally arising on State laws.  The general learning and ability, and especially the prudence, the mildness, and the firmness of his character, eminently fitted Mr. Jay to be the head of such a court.  When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay, it touched nothing less spotless than itself.