Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 1.djvu/594

 538 WORKS OF MADISON. 1791.

ties. His attack on Paine, which I have not seen, will draw the public attention to his obnoxious principles more than every- thing he has published. Besides this, I observe in M c Lean's paper here a long extract from a sensible letter republished from Poughkeepsie, which gives a very unpopular form to his anti-republican doctrines, and presents a strong contrast of them with a quotation from his letter to Mr. Wythe in 1776.

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

NEW YORK, July 10, 1791.

DEAR SIR - * * * * * * The Bank shares have risen as much in the Market here as at Philadelphia. It seems admitted on all hands now that the plan of the institution gives a moral certainty of gain to the subscribers, with scarce a physical possibility of loss. The sub- scriptions are consequently a mere scramble for so much public plunder, which will be engrossed by those already loaded with the spoils of individuals. The event shews what would have been the operation of the plan, if, as originally proposed, subscrip- tions had been limited to the 1st of April, and to the favorite species of stock which the Bank Jobbers had monopolized. It pretty clearly appears, also, in what proportions the public debt lies in the Country, what sort of hands hold it, and by whom the people of the United States are to be governed. Of all the shameful circumstances of this business, it is among the greatest to see the members of the Legislature who were most active in pushing this job openly grasping its emoluments. Schuyler is to be put at the head of the Directors, if the weight of the New York subscribers can effect it. Nothing new is talked of here. In fact, stock-jobbing drowns every other subject. The Coffee- House is in an eternal buzz with the Gamblers.