490

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON.

[CHAP. VI. thought the suspicions against a particular party had been carried a great deal too far. There might be 'desires,' but he did not believe there were 'designs' to change the form of government into a monarchy; that there might be a few who wished it, in the higher walks of life, particularly in the great cities, but that the main body of the people in the Eastern States were as steadily for republicanism as in the Southern."1

Hamilton's letter, in reply to Washington, was in a more conciliatory tone than Jefferson's. He professed himself ready to smooth the path of the President's administration, so far as it might depend on him, though he considered himself as the injured party; and he added, that if the President's efforts to heal existing differences should prove unsuccessful, he believed that the public good would soon require substitutes for the members of his administration. He did not doubt there was a formed party deliberately bent upon a subversion of measures which, in its consequences, would subvert the govern

ment.

Thus serious and bitter were the suspicions entertained, and the charges which these leaders shared with the vulgar herd of their followers, but which had then made no impression on the firm and impartial mind of Washington, who, it must be recollected, had the best opportunity for forming a correct judgment, and who was, moreover, as scrutinizing and as distrustful of human weakness as was compatible with such rare integrity of purpose as his own.

On the cooler survey that we are now enabled to take of this bitter feud, which, beginning in the Cabinet, extended itself to all the politicians of the Union, we see

1 I. Life of Jefferson, page 388.

1792.]

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON.

491

enough to show the justness of Washington's conclusions, and that much of the party accusation against these distinguished statesmen was unfounded.

It is not true that either wished to subvert the Federal Constitution: on the contrary, they both desired to maintain it—each according to his views of the public good; Hamilton to give it all the energy and authority it was susceptible of, and Jefferson only so much as was necessary to fulfil its useful purposes. Jefferson thought the Federal government might become too strong for the equipoise of the States. Hamilton believed the danger to be the other way, and that to insure either stability or wisdom in the measures of the General government, it must exercise a controlling power over the States.

Nor is it true that Jefferson wished to destroy public credit, or repudiate the debt, or that Hamilton wished to perpetuate it. None of the debt was irredeemable, except for a limited time; and though it had been, it might be extinguished by purchase from its holders, at its market prices.

Nor does there appear to have been any thing in Mr. Jefferson's relations with Freneau at all inconsistent with his official duties, or his professions to General Washington. In truth, for the first years after that paper was established, it contained nothing at all against the President, and nothing against Hamilton, except some series of essays signed Brutus, Decius, and the like, in which the policy of the funding system, the assumption, the Bank, and indeed all the leading measures suggested by the Secretary of the Treasury, were earnestly assailed; but always by arguments, which, whether sound or otherwise, were addressed to the understanding, were open to answers; and which never

492

REDEMPTION OF THE DEBT.

[CHAP. VI. transcended the wonted limits of fair political discussion. There is no proof that Mr. Jefferson had any agency in producing these papers; but though he had, with the views which he entertained, and did not conceal in the Cabinet, or out of it, he would have been rather discharging than violating a moral duty, by endeavoring to bring the public to his way of thinking on the subject.

One of the first acts of the House of Representatives was the consideration of the report of the committee on the subject of St. Clair's defeat, which had been made at the close of the preceding session. As this report had passed censures on some of the officers of the army, which were considered to bear both on the War and the Treasury Departments, it was moved that the Secretaries of these Departments should be required to attend the House to give the requisite explanations. But a proper sense of their own dignity, as well as jealousy of Hamilton's influence, produced an earnest opposition to the motion by the republican party, and it was rejected. A course every way preferable was suggested by Mr. Madison, which was to recommit the report to the original committee, before whom the Secretaries should be permitted to attend. This course was adopted, and thus a precedent, so likely to increase the heat often already too great for deliberation, was arrested on the threshold, and has never been revived.

Mr. Fitzsimmons having moved, on the twenty-first of November, to refer the subject of the redemption of the public debt, recommended by the President, to the Secretary of the Treasury, who was required to report a plan for that purpose, the motion was opposed by the republicans, under the influence of the same jealousy of their

1793.]

LOAN FROM THE BANK.

493

own dignity, and of the Secretary's influence.' This motion, like the preceding, was the subject of a lively debate, but it finally prevailed by a vote of thirty-two to twenty-five.

The following day it was also moved to refer to the same officer, to report a plan for immediately reimbursing the loan of the bank to the government, and which, by the terms of the loan, it was required to pay in two annual instalments. This motion was adopted without debate, probably because the opposition party did not again choose to make an unavailing resistance, rather than because they approved of the reference; or, because they viewed the measure itself with favor, knowing as they did that the proposed advance to the bank would be particularly acceptable at that time, when that institution was pressed for money, and that many of the members were holders of its stock, and might be influ enced in their votes by a wish to favor it.

A week later, the Secretary made a report on both subjects. On that of redeeming the debt, after noticing three plans, he gave a preference to that of loans, on the credit of short annuities; and, to meet the interest, he proposed a tax either on riding-horses or pleasure-carriages. For reimbursing the bank, he recommended that the whole sum due (two millions) be borrowed, by which measure, he stated, the government would gain thirty-five thou

That those who had professed themselves anxious to discharge the public debt, and who had made it a matter of serious reproach against Hamilton that he wished to perpetuate it, should be now opposed to its redemption, is presented by Judge Marshall as an instance of party inconsistency or disingenuousness. It is, however, due to those he censures to state that their opposition to the motion turned principally on the attempt to devolve their own financial duties on the Secretary of the Treasury, whose settled maxims of policy they disapproved, and whose influence they consequently did not wish to increase.

494

THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

[CHAP. VI. sand dollars a year-that being the estimated difference between the interest on the loan, and that contracted to be paid to the bank.

This report, and the papers to which it referred, suggested an unwarranted attack on the official conduct of the Secretary of the Treasury, which had the effect of increasing his popularity with the impartial portion of the community-for with the speculators and moneyed classes, generally, it scarcely admitted of increase and of injuring the opposition.

We have seen that the funding system recommended by Hamilton, and adopted by Congress, whatever other merit it might have had, could not boast of its simplicity. Modelled after that of Great Britain in its details, it also copied that complexity which time, and the immense amount of the national debt, had introduced into the English finances.

}

Mr. Jefferson, judging harshly of his rival, used to say that Hamilton made his system intricate, that it might be unintelligible, except to the initiated few; but the variety of its terms offered to the public creditors might have had no other motive than that which Hamilton assigned -one plan being preferred by some men, and another plan by another—or if we must search for a motive to a complexity for which no necessity can now be seen, it may be found in that love of praise to which no man who can earn it is insensible, and which now found gratification in exhibiting a species of talent which was then rare in the country, and which had been most egregiously and almost ridiculously overrated. He naturally wished to show that he had the talents required for this office, and the greater its difficulties, the greater was his merit in mastering them.

From some passages in his report, or in the papers