William Jay, of Westchester county, who still continues to occupy the family mansion in the town of Bedford. The prominent features of Gov. Jay's character are plainly indicated in his various official and public actions, as well as in his quiet and unostentatious discharge of the duties of private life. He was not, perhaps, what may be called a great man. He was not gifted with those shining qualities of genius, which at once astonish and dazzle mankind; nor was he endowed with those creative faculties, that originality of thought, that vig orous grasp of intellect which stamp their possessors with the impress of greatness. And yet, though laying claim to none of these, his was far from a mediocrity, much less an inferiority, of intellect. Jay was decidedly an able man-a man of extensive attainments and erudition-a vigorous writer, and a sound thinker. He was more he had a healthy, temperate and well-balanced mind—a clear, sound, and comprehensive judgment—an admirable prudence and caution. And withall he was a conscientious and a just man-just to his neighbors, as well as to his family, just to his political opponents, as well as to his friends. The caution of Jay was a quality not resulting from timidity or irresolution. Few men were capable of acting a bolder or more determined part, when occasion demanded. Thus we have seen that when Livingston and the New York members hesitated to sign the Declaration, Jay stepped boldly forward in the Convention, and assumed the responsibility of recommending its approval; and thus, too, while on his mission in Spain, without any present prospect of meeting the payment of the heavy amount drawn upon him, he accepted all bills at his own risk-an act which some might call temerity and rashness. But the prudent conduct of Jay was rather the result of that innate love of justice, that desire on all occasions of standing publicly upon the clearest and most defensible issues, that effort to avoid every controversy, unless under the most obvious claim of right. Thus it was, that even after the humble petition of the first Congress to the King had been treated with the most insulting neglect, Jay originated and carried through, in the next Congress, against the most determined opposition, the proposition to send another "petition" to the King, which in like manner was "spurned from the foot of the throne." He desired to place the action of the Congress upon the highest, the clearest and most indisputable basis of right, and to leave no cause for cavil, even on the part of the friends of the British cause. It was the suggestion, not of prudence merely, but of wisdom, for it placed in the hands of Congress, a moral power which nothing else could give. The same calm, deliberate, but firm judg ment, tempered always with prudence and caution, is observable in all his actions. And yet he was deficient neither in quickness of determination, vigor and boldness of design, nor tenacity of purpose. Indeed, in some respects he might be called an obstinate man— tenacious of what he believed to be right-never conceding a point of conscience, and never yielding a principle. The virtues of such a man might still be remembered and sung in lyric strains by the Roman bard— Justum et tenacem propositi virum, though the republic no longer existed, and the last bright exemplar of those virtues had passed away. The same virtues lived and were exemplified in the early ages of our republic, and in the character of John Jay. Just and firm of purpose, neither the idle clamor of the popu lace, nor the countenance of the tyrant could avail to shake his solid temper; and these virtues, though perchance they may not be breathed in the numbers of some future lyric song, will be remembered in history, even though America should follow the example of the proud republic of antiquity. JOHN RUTLEDGE. THE practical sagacity of Washington, and his almost intuitive knowledge of character, rarely failed him in that most difficult branch of executive duty, appointments to places of official trust and responsibility. In the administration of government, as well as upon the theatre of military operations, he was not only quick in discerning real merit, but correct in estimating the true worth of a man and his fitness for the discharge of a specific duty. The same penetrating glance which discovered under the modest garb of General Greene a military genius fit to direct the operations of the southern army, discovered also, not the ability and worth only, but the precise sphere of action suited to the capacity and genius of the men he called around him to fill the highest executive and judicial stations under the Federal Government. Thus it was that, on the resignation of Chief-Justice Jay, trusting to the instincts of his own mind, and relying upon his own discriminating judgment, in opposition to the advice of perhaps the most trusted of his counsellors, he passed by such able jurists as Ellsworth and Livingston, Cushing and Paterson, and promptly tendered the vacant Chief Justiceship to John Rutledge, of South Carolina. It is much to be regretted that no complete biography of this eminent statesman and jurist has been written, and that so little is now known of one of the earliest, and ablest, and firmest friends of American independ ence. |