Page:Lamb - History of the city of New York - Volume 3.djvu/27

Rh to be prescribed for the first time; custom-houses and loan-offices regulated; provision made for the efficient collection and distribution of the revenue; the accounts of receipts and expenditures systematized; in all of which the easy attainment of complete information at the Treasury was to be united with the preservation of central and local accountability. Everything connected with the finance of the country was in a state of almost inextricable confusion. The national debt, originating chiefly in the Revolution, was of two kinds, foreign and domestic. The foreign debt, amounting to nearly twelve millions, was due to France, Holland, and a fraction to Spain. The domestic debt, due to individuals in America for loans to the government or supplies furnished to the army, reached forty-two millions. Another class of debts, amounting to some twenty-five millions, rested upon a different footing; the States individually had constructed works of defense within their respective limits, and advanced pay, bounties, provisions, clothing, and munitions of war to Continental troops. Hamilton proposed not only that the foreign debt should be paid strictly according to the terms of contract, but that all domestic debts, including those of the particular States, should be funded, and that the nation should become responsible for their payment to the full amount.

Oliver Wolcott was a young man of thirty, but not without experience in finance, having been for nine years almost constantly employed by his