nal, that nothing short of thorough breeding in both could have kept them well with one another.

There is no contest so little harmful as an open one. The English people have originated no governmental device better than the arrangement of their parliament, by which the administration members sit facing the opposition, and the leaders of the two bodies fight it out openly in the hearing of mankind. These two men should have been avowed opponents, not colleagues, and debated publicly the high concerns respecting which they were bound to differ; so as to correct while exasperating one another; so as to inform, at once, and stimulate the public mind. Hamilton's fluency and self-confidence would have given him the advantage for a while; but Jefferson would have had the American people behind him, since it was his part to marshal them the way they were to go.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE CABINET OF PRESIDENT WASHINGTON.

"WE are in a wilderness, without a single footstep to guide us." Thus wrote Madison to Jefferson, in June, 1789, from his seat in Congress, when President Washington, not yet three months in office, and without a cabinet, was surveying the thousand difficulties of his position: "the whole scene," as the gloomy mind of Fisher Ames conceived it, "a deep, dark, and dreary chaos."

The government of the United States at that moment consisted of General Washington, Congress, and a roll of parchment: the last named being the Constitution, the sole guide out of the "wilderness" of which Mr. Madison wrote. Footstep there was none. No nation had travelled that way before; though all nations may be destined to follow the path which the United States have since "blazed" and half beaten. Every thing was to be done, and there seemed nothing to do it with, not even money to pay the government's board; there being as yet no treasury, no treasurer, and no treasure. And worse this outline, this sketch, this shadowy promise of a government, was confronted with what seemed to the simple souls of the time a giant debt, - a thousand-armed Briareus, -debt in all forms, paper of every kind known to impecunious man. The total approached fifty-four millions of dollars, to say nothing of the debts of the several States, amounting to twenty-one millions more. Worst of all, fifteen millions of the general debt was arrears of interest! Hence, the credit of the government was low; not so low as that of the late Congress, whose Promise to Pay Bearer one dollar had passed, as money, in 1787, for eight cents; but so low that the money lent it to subsist upon for the first few months was lent chiefly as a mark of confidence in the men who solicited it.

There was not much real money in the country. No one, not even the richest man, could raise a large sum of unquestionable cash. The estate of General Washington was extensive, and not so unproductive as many; but, during the first year and a half of his presidency, he was often embarrassed, and was once obliged to raise money on his own note to Tobias Lear, at two per cent a month, in order to enable "The Steward of the Household " to pay off the butcher and the grocer before leaving for Mount Vernon. Years later we find the secretary of the treasury taken to task in Congress for presuming to advance the president a quarter's salary. The first Congress was paid, in part, by anticipating the duties at the custom-houses, each member receiving a certificate of indebtedness, which the collectors were required to receive for duties. The personal credit of the secretary of the treasury (when at last there was one) helped members to many a liberal shave, and lured from the Bank of New York several timely loans, which kept the life in a starving government.

"What are we to do with this heavy debt?" the new president asked of Robert Morris, who had so long superintended the finances of the Confederacy, both in war and in peace. The answer was, "There is but one man in the United States who can tell you: that is Alexander Hamilton." Colonel Hamilton agreed with Robert Morris in this opinion. He had had an eye upon the office of secretary of the treasury: not from any common-place ambition; but because, feeling equal to the post, he believed he could be of more service in it than in any other. "I can restore the public credit," said he to Gouverneur Morris. It was not in the nature of that cool, consummate disciple of Epicurus to sympathize with the spirit of martyrdom; and hence he endeavored to dissuade his young friend from encountering the obloquy and distrust which then so often assailed ministers of finance. Hamilton's reply was, that he expected calumny and persecution. "But," said he, "I am convinced it is the situation in which I can do most good." Washington was scarcely sworn in before he told Hamilton he meant to offer him the department of finance; and the next day Colonel Hamilton called upon his old comrade, Colonel Troup, then a thriving lawyer in New York, and asked him if he would undertake to wind up his law business. Troup remonstrated against his making so great a sacrifice. Hamilton replied to him as to Morris,

that the impression upon his mind was strong, that, in the place offered him, he could essentially promote the welfare of the country. Without being devoid of a proper and even strong desire to distinguish himself, doubtless he accepted the office in the spirit in which he urged some of his friends to take places under the experimental government. "If it is possible, my dear Harrison," he wrote to one of those who shrank from the toil, the wandering, and poverty of the Supreme Bench, "give yourself to us. We want men like you." Good and able men were wanted, because, as he said in the same letter, "I consider the business of America's happiness as yet to be done!"

It is the privilege of Americans, despite the efforts of so many misinterpreters of the men of that time, to believe that every member of General Washington's administration accepted office in the same high, disinterested spirit. Every one of them sacrificed his pecuniary interest, and most of them sacrificed their inclinations, to aid in giving the government a start. The salaries attached to their places were almost as insufficient as they are now. Not a man of them lived upon his official income, any more than the members of the government of to-day live upon theirs. In 1789 there seemed (but only seemed) a necessity for fixing the salaries of the dozen men upon whom the success of the system chiefly depended, at such a point that their service was generosity as much as duty. There is an impression that we owe to Jefferson the system of paying extravagantly low salaries to high men. Not

so.

He was far too good a republican to favor an idea so aristocratic. Make offices desirable, he says, if you wish to get superior men to fill them. In giving his ideas respecting the proposed new constitution for Virginia, he dwelt upon this point, and returned to it. There is nothing in the writings of Jefferson which gives any show of support to temptation salaries or to ignorant suffrage, — the bane and terror of our present politics.

Henry Knox, whom President Washington appointed secretary of war, had been, before the Revolution, a thriving Boston bookseller, with so strong a natural turn for soldiering that he belonged to two military companies at once, and read all the works in his shop which treated of military things. From Bunker Hill, where he served as volunteer aid to General Artemas Ward, to Yorktown, where he commanded and ably directed the artillery, he was an

efficient, faithful soldier; and after the war, being retained in service, he had the chief charge of the military affairs of the Confederacy, high in the confidence of the disbanded army and its chief. He was a man of large, athletic frame, tall, deep-chested, loud-voiced, brave, delighting in the whirl and rush of field-artillery and the thunder of siege-guns. But a secretary of war is the adviser of the head of the government on all subjects; and General Knox was only acquainted with one. Nor was he a man of capacious and inquisitive mind. He was one who must take his opinions from another mind, or not have any opinions. But such men, since they lack the only thing in human nature which is progressive, original intelligence, have usually a bias toward what we now call the conservative side of politics. We hear sometimes of "the car of progress." Intellect alone appears to be the engine which raws that celebrated vehicle, every thing else within us being burden or brake. Not only are indolence, ignorance, timidity, and habit conservative, but love and imagination also cling fondly to the old way, to the old house at home, and to all things ancient and sanctioned; so that, often, the highest genius in the community and its stolidest clodhopper belong to the same political party. Thackeray owned that he preferred the back seat in the car aforesaid, because it. commanded a view of the country which had been traversed, Queen Anne's reign, instead of Queen Victoria's ; and we observe the same tendency in most men of illustrious gifts. It is only intellect, the fearless and discerning mind, that discovers the better path, or welcomes the news that a better path has been discovered. Happy the land where this priceless force has free play; for, small as it ever is in quantity, we owe to it every step that man has made from the condition of the savage.

General Knox had much faith in the tools he was accustomed to use. His original remedy for the ills of the Confederacy was as simple and complete as a patent medicine: Extinguish the State governments, and establish an imposing general government, with plenty of soldiers to enforce its decrees. In the cabinet of President Washington, he was the giant shadow of his diminutive friend Hamilton. When Hamilton had spoken, Knox was usually ready to say in substance, "My own opinion, better expressed."

These two men were established as members of the cabinet as early as September, 1789, Mr. Jay continuing to serve as secre