He obtained the confidence of men of business in very early life, and of the people of New York as soon as they required able and fearless agents to carry on the controversy with the mother country, and retained it not only in the outbreak and vicissitudes of the Revolution, but in the period .of discontent and uneasiness which followed the acknowledgment of our independence by Great Britain, and until his voluntary retirement from public life, several years after the adoption of the present Constitution of the United States. His history teaches that it was not by shrinking from responsibility that he retained his high standing, for he is always found 2 prominent actor whenever engaged in business with others, and in every body or party of which he was a member.

James Duane was born in the city of New York on 6th February, 1732-3. He was the third son of Anthony Duane, a gentleman from Cong, in the county of Galway, Ireland, who, having when very young been a purser in the British Navy on the New York station, resigned his situation and returned to the city of New York, where he spent the rest of his life as a merchant, and where he died on the 14th August, 1747. The mother of James Duane was Altea Kettletas, his father's second wife, and daughter of Abraham Kettletas, one of the most considerable merchants,and long an Alderman, of the city of New York. She died when he was only three years old, and in May, 1741, his father married a third wife, the widow of Thomas Lynch, wwhioUe maiden