In a word, it may be said that what George Washington was in the field, in council, and as President, John Jay was in legislative halls, in diplomatic circles, and as a jurist.

The crowning act of his life was undoubtedly the peace treaty of 1783.

But great as was this diplomatic triumph he lived long enough to realise that the failure to include Canada within the young Republic's domain was ground for just criticism.

At forty-five he stood one step only below the highest place in the nation, and now by a unanimous vote he became president of the second constitutional convention of the Empire State.

Hamilton thought him a dangerous man, guided neither by patriotism nor principle, who might at any moment throttle constitutional government and set up a dictatorship after the manner of Napoleon.

The strength of his intellect no one disputed, and if his political affiliations seemed to warp his judgment in affairs of state, it was none the less impartial and enlightened when brought to bear on difficult questions of law.

It is doubtful if the framers of the Constitution recognised the enormous power they had given it.

Burr's conduct during those momentous weeks when Federalists did their utmost to make him President, gave his rivals ample ground for creating the belief that he had evidenced open contempt for the principles of honest dealing.

The letters of Junius did not make themselves felt in English political life more than did this pamphlet in the political circles of New York.

It was novel, it was brilliantly able, and it drove the knife deeper and surer than its predecessors.

Whatever the Vice President knew, or thought he knew, was poured into those eighty pages with a staggering fulness and disregard of consequences that startled the political world and captivated all lovers of the brilliant and sensational…

Confidences were revealed, conversations made public, quarrels uncovered, political secrets given up, and the gossip of Council and Legislature churned into a story that pleased every one.

However unscrupulous and selfish the Clintons and the Livingstons might be, Burr's unprincipled conduct was fixed in the mind of his party, not by Cheetham's indulgence in fancy and inference, but by the well known and well established…

Perhaps his nearest approach to a splendid virtue was his stubborn independence.

Lansing had the instinct, equipment, and training for a chancellor.

In one of his dramas Schiller mourns over the man who stakes reputation, health, everything upon success--and no success in the end.

But in 1804 Burr found himself without a party, without a machine, and bitterly opposed by Hamilton.

When the sceptre passed from Federalist to Republican in 1801, Hamilton gave himself to his profession with renewed zeal, earning fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a reputation as a lawyer scarcely surpassed by Daniel Webster.

As well might one compare Offenbach with Mozart as Burr with Hamilton.

To this point, in his argument for a new trial, Hamilton addressed himself, contending that the English doctrine was at variance with common sense, common justice, and the genius of American institutions.

He believed that the rights and liberties of the people were essentially concerned.

His whole soul was enlisted in the cause, and in contending for the rights of the jury and a free press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression.

Pickering and Griswold could win their game only by bartering their souls; they must invoke the Mephistopheles of politics, Aaron Burr.

It was plain to Hamilton that these timid conspirators wanted a bold chief to lead them into secession, and that since he would have nothing to do with them, they had invoked the aid of Aaron Burr.

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.