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Show HAMILTON VS. BRYAN. A correspondent of the New York Sun notes Mr. - Bryan's peculiar effort in the moot court debate he is conducting with Senator Beveridge to make Hamilton's plan of a Federal Constitution justify the extension of national jurisdiction so as to include Federal incorporation of railways and Federal own-. own-. ership of them. - - It seems to us that by a certain decision delivered de-livered by the United States Senate about two or three weeks ago, the Federal power has been extended ex-tended far enough, but the correspondent takes the right view,' that there is nothing in the life or acts of Alexander Hamilton that justifies Mr, Bryan's argument. ' ; He calls attention to the marvelous debate that ( was held in Poughkeepsie nearly 119 years ago, in the New York convention to consider the draft of the Constitution, in which Hamilton in combat with j Clinton finally changed the majority of two-thirds afainst'the draft into a majority of three in favor of it. - - He further cites the more than fifty essays in the Federalist, written by Hamilton , to persuade his countrymen to accept the Constitution, and to Hamilton's Hamil-ton's years of labor in Washington's Cabinet, which gave life and vigor to the immortal document. He says nothing to' encourage Mr. Bryan in his wild scheme of State and Federal ownership. Alexander Hamilton was a man who believed in doing things. He mistrusted the ability of the people to control the Government. He grew up under the idea that the British Constitution was the best in the world. He fought his way through the national con-. con-. vention. He did not get all he asked for we suspect that he did not want to get all he asked for. He was a champion in that convention of the draft for the Constitution; then it was Alexander Hamilton that caused it to be accepted by the States. He went back to his adopted State, and as the correspondent of the Sun states, he met the men who believed as Clinton and Burr believed, and he beat them fairly in the i debate, called their attention to the fact that after the war was settled there had been six years of chaos, it was time to have a settled and stable government, gov-ernment, and when it was accepted, he went into Washington's Cabinet, fought Jefferson through all the years, placed the Treasury of the United States on a solid basis, brought order out of chaos, and was the most valuable man in the United States, perhaps in the world. Through that first term of Washington he came nearer being the Julius Caesar of the United States than any man that has ever lived since his day. He was a magnificent scholar, a born statesman, a born writer and a born financier. One of the great misfortunes of this country is that he was cut off in his prime, killed in a foolish duel by a conscienceless conscience-less man, whose chief hate against him was because he knew Hamilton was his superior in every attribute attri-bute that goes to make up a glorified man. We can imagine that if he was back on earth and in the prime of his faculties how he would tear to pieces Mr. Bryan's proposition for the Government of the United States to pick up more than 300,000 miles of railroad in this country, with its hundreds of thousands thou-sands of employees, and make that an instrument in running elections. By the way, the German railroads are a pretty good object lesson for us just now. They have less accidents than, we do, because their sphere is very much limited compared with ours; because labor is cheap and they can have twice as many employees as we have ; but there is perpetual complaint over the ' service. There are perpetual robberies of goods, delays and incompetent service, dur railroads are not perfect, but they are in the hands of some of, the brightest intellects on earth, and the only thing needed is tjo compel them simply to be what they were designed to be common carriers, never discriminating dis-criminating against either individuals or places and to make more stringent laws to prevent accidents acci-dents in their conduct. 1 |