Yet the joy was great and general throughout the Confederacy, and the consternation scarcely less so in the United Kingdom. When Lord North received the news in Downing Street, he considered it as decisive of the contest. "He took it," said Lord George Germaine, who brought him the tidings, as he would have taken a ball in the breast; for he opened his arms, exclaiming wildly, as he paced up and down the apartment: O God! it is all over!"

The part which Hamilton performed in this affair gained him universal honour, and his bearing under it was equally becoming. He received the congratulations of his fellow-soldiers with modest dignity, and it was in these quiet and unpretending terms that he wrote to his wife with reference to his late exploit:-"Two nights ago, my Eliza, my duty and my honour obliged me to take a step in which your happiness was too much risked. I commanded an attack upon one of the enemy's redoubts; we carried it in an instant, and with little loss. You will see the particulars in the Philadelphia papers. There will be, certainly, nothing more of this kind; all the rest will be by approach; and if there should be another occasion it will not fall to my lot to execute it."

Cornwallis having surrendered, and the efforts of General Greene in South Carolina having brought the campaign there to a successful issue for the Americans, Sir Henry Clinton was left to act wholly on the defensive, and the war was virtually at an end. It was true that England might yet renew the struggle; but it was generally believed that she was weary of so unprofitable a contest, and that, if she could succeed in striking some great blow at her old enemies of France and Spain, she would be willing to let her rebellious children depart in peace. A few months later, Rodney's great victory restored to her the undisputed empire of the sea, the East and West Indies were once more within her grasp, and the vaunted floating batteries of the Chevalier d'Arçon perished in blood and fire beneath the guns of Gibraltar-but Lord North's administration had already fallen before a hostile vote of the House of Commons, and no further operations were attempted on the continent of America. Meanwhile, the Confederacy waited in an attitude of expectation, and Hamilton returned home to Albany to his wife and new-born child. He expressed his intention of retiring from active service, but at the same time announced that he

should always be ready at the call of his country to act in any capacity that might be required.

Convinced that the war was drawing to a close, he had already determined to engage in a profession which would enable him to support his family in comfort and independence. It was now the spring of 1782, and the soldier of five-and-twenty (to whom had been committed such important interests as were hardly ever before confided to a man so young) withdrew from the field with no emolument but his fame, and set himself to study the law, in preparation for an entirely new career. Declining the generous offers of Schuyler, and regardless of the advice of friends, who wished him to apply to Congress for some employment worthy of his talents and eminent services, he resolved to trust to himself alone for the advancement of his fortunes. Within four months from the commenceof his studies, he had composed for his own use a Manual on the Practice of the Law, which subsequently served as a guide for future students, and became the groundwork of enlarged treatises on the subject. The same vigour of mind, which he had displayed in all other pursuits, enabled him to master with ease the difficulties and subtleties

of legal procedure, and in after years he attained the position of a leading practitioner at the bar.

But while he was employed in preparing for his new profession, his attention was never wholly diverted from politics. In June, 1782, he is found strongly protesting against the contemplated execution of Captain Asgill, a young British officer, who had been selected by lot from the other prisoners, to suffer in retaliation for the murder of an American captain, named Huddy, put to death by some refugees on the English side. “A sacrifice of this sort," he says, "is entirely repugnant to the genius of the age we live in, and is without example in modern history, nor can it fail to be considered in Europe as wanton and unnecessary. It appears that the enemy (from necessity, I grant, but the operation is the same) have changed their system, and adopted a more humane one; and, therefore, the only justifying motive of retaliation, the preventing a repetition of cruelty, ceases. But, if this were not the case, so solemn and deliberate a sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty must be condemned on the present received notions of humanity, and encourage an opinion, that we are in a certain degree in a state of barbarism.

Our affairs are now in a prosperous train, and so vigorous, I would rather say so violent a measure, would want the plea of necessity. It would argue meanness in us, that at this late stage of the war, in the midst of success, we should suddenly depart from that temper with which we have all along borne with as great, and more frequent provocations." These moderate and humane counsels were soon after backed by the representations of the Court of France, moved by the intercession of the young officer's mother to Queen Marie Antoinette, and Captain Asgill was ultimately set at liberty, and restored to his friends; but in this, as in other instances, Hamilton had the merit of upholding the cause of mercy from the first, and of seeing at a glance that it was identical with the true policy of his country.

He was next appointed Receiver of Continental Taxes in the State of New York-a newly-created office, which he held only for a short time-and, a little later, he was elected a delegate to Congress. He entered that body with a high reputation for ability, which he more than justified in the sequel. General Schuyler, writing to his daughter from Philadelphia, in December, 1782, thus speaks of