108 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 



that must seem even more remarkable to-day than it 

 did at the time, since we can appreciate the writer's 

 foresight as contemporaries necessarily could not. At 

 the beginning of 1775 very few leaders, even in Mas- 

 sachusetts or Virginia, were in favour of independence. 

 The author of " The Farmer Refuted " hints at inde- 

 pendence as the possible outcome of the quarrel, indi- 

 cates a Fabian military policy as most likely to baffle 

 Great Britain, and surmises that France and even 

 Spain might find it for their interest to take part in 

 the struggle. That such advanced views could have 

 been even suggested without weakening the effect of 

 the pamphlet shows a tact and an artfulness of state- 

 ment not less remarkable than the other qualities of 

 the young writer. 



It was not long before the news of Lexington 

 wrought the excitement in New York to fever heat. 

 There were street fights between Tories and Whigs, 

 and here Hamilton's hatred of anarchy was well illus- 

 trated. To him independence was one thing, mob 

 law quite another. A party of rioters beset the house 

 of Dr. Cooper, the Tory president of the college, with 

 intent to seize him and in some way maltreat him. 

 Hamilton got into the foremost rank of the crowd till 

 he reached the door-step, then faced about and ad- 

 dressed the rioters, and held them at bay while the 

 doctor escaped through the back garden and took 

 refuge on the deck of a British seventy-four. Pres- 

 ently, when Isaac Sears raised a troop of horse over in 

 Connecticut and dashed into New York at their head 

 to attack Rivington's Tory printing-press, Hamilton 

 incurred no little risk in confronting them with argu- 

 ments and expostulations. The press was destroyed 



