The secretary of the treasury had deemed it indispensable to the creation of public credit, that the appropriations of funds for the payment of the interest, and the gradual redemption of the principal of the national debt, should be not only sufficient, but permanent also. A party was found in the first congress who opposed this principle; and were in favour of retaining a full power over the subject in each branch of the legislature, by making annual appropriations. The arguments which had failed in congress appear to have been more successfully employed with the people. Among the multiplied vices which were ascribed to the funding system, it was charged with introducing a permanent and extensive mortgage of funds, which was alleged to strengthen unduly the hands of the executive magistrate, and to be one of the many evidences which existed, of monarchical propensities in those who administered the government.

The report lately made by the secretary of the treasury, and the bill founded on that report, contemplated a permanent increase of the duties on certain specified articles; and a permanent appropriation of the revenue arising from them, to the purposes of the national debt. Thirty-one members were in favour of the motion for limiting the duration of the bill, and only thirty against it. By the rules of the house, the speaker has a right first to vote as a member; and, if the numbers should then * be equally divided, to decide as speaker. Being opposed to the limitation, the motion was lost by his voice.

On the eighth of May, after an active and interesting session, congress adjourned to the first Monday in November.

The asperity which, on more than one occasion, discovered itself in debate, was a certain index of the growing exasperation of parties; and the strength of the opposition on those questions which brought into review the points on which the administration was to be attacked, denoted the impression which the specific charges brought against those who conducted public affairs, had made on the minds of the people, in an extensive division of the continent. It may conduce to a more perfect understanding of subsequent transactions, to present, in this place, a sketch of those charges.

It was alleged that the public debt was too great to be paid before other causes of adding to it would occur. This accumulation of debt had been artificially produced by the assumption of what was due from Its immediate effect was to deprive the government of its power over those easy sources of revenue, which, applied to its ordinary necessities and exigencies, would have answered them habitually, and thereby have avoided those burdens on the people which occasioned

the states.

such murmurs against taxes, and tax gatherers. As a consequence of it, although the calls for money had not been greater than must be expected for the same or equivalent exigencies, yet congress had been already obliged, not only to strain the impost until it produced clamour, and would produce evasion, and war on their own citizens to collect it; but even to resort to an excise law, of odious character with the people, partial in its operation, unproductive unless enforced by arbitrary and vexatious means, and committing the authority of the government in parts where resistance was most probable, and coercion least practicable.

That the United States, if left free to act at their discretion, might borrow at two-thirds of the interest contracted to be paid to the public creditors, and thus discharge themselves from the principle in two-thirds of the time: but from this they were precluded by the irredeemable quality of the debt; a quality given for the avowed purpose of inviting its transfer to foreign countries. This transfer of the principal when completed would occasion an exportation of three millions of dollars annually for the interest, a drain of coin without example, and of the consequences of which no calculation could be made.

The banishment of coin would be completed by ten millions of paper money in the form of bank bills, which were then issuing into circulation. Nor would this be the only mischief resulting from the institution of the bank. The ten or twelve per cent. annual profit paid to the lenders of this paper medium would take out of the pockets of the people, who would have had, without interest, the coin it was banishing. That all the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing like that on a gaming table no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture, where it would have produced addition to the common mass. The wealth therefore heaped upon individuals by the funding and banking systems, would be productive of general poverty and distress. That in addition to the encouragement these measures gave to vice and idleness, they had furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turned the balance between the honest voters. This corrupt squad, deciding the voice of the legislature, had manifested their dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed by the constitution; limitations on the faith of which the states acceded to that instrument. They were proceeding rapidly in their plan of absorbing all power, invading the rights of the states, and converting the federal into a consolidated government.

That the ultimate object of all this was to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the English constitution was to be the model. So many of the

friends of monarchy were in the legislature, that,, aided by the corrupt squad of paper dealers who were at their devotion, they made a majority in both houses. The republican party, even when united with the antifederalists, continued a minority.

That of all the mischiefs resulting from the system of measures which was so much reprobated, none was so afflicting, so fatal to every honest hope, as the corruption of the legislature. As it was the earliest of these measures, it became the instrument for producing the rest, and would be the instrument for producing in future, a king, lords, and commons; or whatever else those who directed it might choose. Withdrawn such a distance from the eye of their constituents, they would form the most corrupt government on earth, if the means of their corruption were not prevented.

These strictures on the conduct of administration were principally directed against measures which had originated with the secretary of the treasury, and had afterwards received the sanction of the legislature. In the southern division of the continent, that officer was unknown, except to a few military friends, and to those who had engaged in the legislative or executive departments of the former or present government. His systems of revenue having been generally opposed by the southern members, and the original opposition to the constitution having been particularly great in Virginia and North Carolina, the aspersions on his views, and on the views of the eastern members by whom his plans had been generally supported, were seldom controverted. The remote tendency of particular systems, and the motives for their adoption, are so often subjects of conjecture, that the judgment, when exercised upon them, is peculiarly exposed to the influence of the passions; and where measures are in themselves burdensome, and the necessity for their adoption has not been appreciated, suspicions of their unknown advocates, can seldom be unsuccessfully urged by persons, in whom the people have placed their confidence. It is not therefore cause of astonishment, that the dark motives ascribed to the authors of tax laws, should be extensively believed.

Throughout the United States, the party opposed to the constitution had charged its supporters with a desire to establish a monarchy on the ruins of republican government; and the constitution itself was alleged to contain principles which would prove the truth of this charge. The leaders of that party had, therefore, been ready from the instant the vernment came into operation, to discover, in all its measures, those monarchical tendencies which they had perceived in the instrument they opposed.

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The salaries allowed to public officers, though so low* as not to afford a decent maintenance to those who resided at the seat of government, were declared to be so enormously high, as clearly to manifest a total disregard of that simplicity and economy which were the characteristics of republics.

The levees of the President, and the evening parties of Mrs. Washington, were said to be imitations of regal institutions, designed to accustom the American people to the pomp and manners of European courts. The Vice President too was said to keep up the state and dignity of a monarch, and to illustrate, by his conduct, the principles which were inculcated in his political works.

The Indian war they alleged was misconducted, and unnecessarily prolonged for the purposes of expending the public money, and of affording a pretext for augmenting the military establishment, and increasing the revenue.

All this prodigal waste of the money of the people was designed to keep up the national debt, and the influence it gave the government, which, united with standing armies, and immense revenues, would enable their rulers to rivet the chains which they were secretly forging. Every prediction which had been uttered respecting the anti-republican principles of the government, was said to be rapidly verifying, and that which was disbelieved as prophecy, was daily becoming history. If a remedy for these ills was not found in the increased representation of the people which would take place at the ensuing elections, they would become too monstrous to be borne; and when it was recollected that the division of opinion was marked by a geographical line, there was reason to fear that the union would be broken into one or more confederacies.

These irritable symptoms had assumed appearances of increased malignity during the session of congress which had just terminated; and, to the President, who firmly believed that the union and the liberty of the states depended on the preservation of the government, they were the more unpleasant and the more alarming, because they were displayed in full force in his cabinet.

Between the secretaries of the state and treasury departments, a disagreement existed, which seems to have originated in an early stage of the administration, and to have acquired a regular accession of strength from circumstances which were perpetually occurring, until it grew into open and irreconcileable hostility.

Without tracing this disagreement to those motives, which, in elective

* The salary of the secretary of state, which was the highest, was three thousand five hundred dollars,

governments especially, often produce enmities between distinguished personages, neither of whom acknowledges the superiority of the other, such radical differences of opinion, on points which would essentially influence the course of the government, were supposed to exist between the secretaries, as, in a great measure, to account for this unextinguishable enmity. These differences of opinion were, perhaps, to be ascribed, in some measure, to a difference in the original structure of their minds, and, in some measure, to the difference of the situations in which they had been placed.

Until near the close of the war, Mr. Hamilton had served his country in the field; and, just before its termination, had passed from the camp into congress, where he remained for some time after peace had been established. In the former station, the danger to which the independence of his country was exposed from the imbecility of the government was perpetually before his eyes; and, in the latter, his attention was forcibly directed towards the loss of its reputation, and the sacrifice of its best interests, which were to be ascribed to the same cause. Mr. Hamilton, therefore, was the friend of a government which should possess, in itself, sufficient powers and resources to maintain the character, and defend the integrity of the nation. Having long felt and witnessed the mischiefs produced by the absolute sovereignty of the states, and by the control which they were enabled and disposed separately to exercise over every measure of general concern, he was particularly apprehensive of danger from that quarter; which he, probably, believed was to be the more dreaded, because the habits and feelings of the American people were calculated to inspire state, rather than national prepossessions. Under the influence of these impressions, he is understood to have avowed opinions in the convention favourable to a system in which the executive and senate, though elective, were to be rather more permanent, than they were rendered in that which was actually proposed. He afterwards supported the constitution, as framed, with great ability, and contributed essentially to its adoption. But he still retained, and openly avowed, the opinion, that the greatest hazards to which it was exposed arose from its weakness, and that American liberty and happiness had much more to fear from the encroachments of the great states, than from those of the general government..

Mr. Jefferson had retired from congress before the depreciation of the currency had produced an entire dependence of the general on the local governments; after which he filled the highest offices in the state of which he was a citizen. About the close of the war he was re-elected to congress; but, being soon afterwards employed on a mission to the