Jefferson and the brief term of Randolph, was Secretary of State under both Presidents, was a remarkable man, sincere and honest, I am willing to believe, in his political opinions, but savagely bitter in his feelings toward his opponents. It seemed pretty much a matter of course in him to hate those to whose political course he was opposed, and, as is usually the case with minds thus constituted, he was equally bigoted in his devotion to those with whom he agreed and acted. General Hamilton was his _beau ideal_ of a politician and statesman, and it would not have been an easy matter in him to have dissented from any opinion positively advanced by Hamilton, whatever his own first impressions on the subject might have been. Mr. McHenry, Secretary of War in both cabinets, was undoubtedly an honorable and well-disposed gentleman. He was, in the opinion of those who had the best opportunities for judging, including Washington and Hamilton, not entirely competent for the duties of his office, and that circumstance drove him the more to rely for support on Hamilton, for whom he cherished an early and ardent friendship. His personal devotion to Hamilton was such as to prevent Mr. Adams from longer overlooking his incompetency, as Washington had done, and precipitated his resignation. Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, the member of his cabinet most trusted by President Adams because the least suspected, was, notwithstanding, the one among his official advisers who went the greatest lengths to testify his entire allegiance to Hamilton, who had been the artificer of his political fortunes from the beginning and by whose influence he had been advanced to the high position he occupied. Throughout he advised with and was assisted by Hamilton in the performance of his official duties. Such was Hamilton's "power over his mind" that he was applied to successfully by the former for evidence of facts to be derived from the treasury archives to sustain an attack that Hamilton contemplated making upon the President--an attack that he did make, although he acknowledged to Wolcott that it would not be regarded as proper that he should have received the evidence at his hands, and that that fact ought not therefore to be known. No one can read the correspondence between General Hamilton and Mr. Wolcott, as recently published with Hamilton's Works, without regretting that the parties to it should have been so forgetful of the proprieties due to the occasions to which it relates, or without a disposition to excuse the strong expression of Mr. Charles F. Adams, in speaking of his grandfather's cabinet, applied to Mr. Wolcott "as the most venomous serpent of them all."