Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/432

 418 ALEXANDER HAMILTON passed acts reorganizing the executive depart- ments, Washington in 1789 selected Hamilton as secretary of the treasury. At the ensuing session Hamilton presented an elaborate report on the public debt and the ree"stablishment of the public credit. That debt was of two de- scriptions, loans obtained abroad, and certifi- cates issued for money lent, supplies furnished, and services rendered at home. As to the for- eign debt, all agreed that it must be met in the precise terms of the contract. As to the domestic debt, the certificates of which had largely changed hands at a great depreciation, the idea had been suggested of paying them at the rates at which they had been purchased by the present holders. The report of the secre- tary took strong ground against this project. He considered it essential to the reestablish - ment of the public credit that the assignees of the certificates should be considered as stand- ing precisely in the place of the original credi- tors ; and the funding system which he pro- posed, and which was carried in the face of a strong opposition, was based on this idea. Another part of the system not less warmly opposed was the assumption of the debts con- tracted by the states in the prosecution of the late war. At the next session he proposed two other measures, both of which encountered a not less earnest resistance an excise duty on domestic spirits, and a national bank with a capital of $10,000,000. At the first session of the second congress Hamilton presented an elaborate report on the policy of having regard in the imposition of duties on imports to the protection of domestic manufactures, with an answer to the objections made against it a summary of the arguments on that side of the question to which subsequent discussion has added little. The success of the funding sys- tem and the bank gave Hamilton a strong hold upon the moneyed and mercantile classes, but they also raised against him a very bitter opposi- tion, which extended even to the cabinet, Mr. Jefferson, .the secretary of state, strongly sym- pathizing with it. Both the funding system and the bank were denounced as instruments of corruption dangerous in the highest degree to the liberties of the people, and Hamilton as designing to introduce by their means aristoc- racy and monarchy. Charges of this sort, con- stantly iterated in a newspaper edited by a clerk in the state department, drew out from Hamil- ton a newspaper article under the signature of "An American," in which he charged upon Jefferson the instigation of these attacks, and urged the inconsistency of Jefferson's holding a place in an administration the policy of which he assailed. At the next session of congress a violent attack was made by Mr. Giles of Vir- ginia upon the management of the treasury de- partment. He moved nine resolutions of cen- sure, hut Hamilton sent in a triumphant reply, and the proceedings proved a total failure. The breaking out of the war between England and France in 1793, by raising new questions as to the policy to be pursued toward the bel- ligerents, aggravated the differences between Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton favored the policy of a strict and exact neutrality, and the right of the president to assume that posi- tion ; and he defended his views in print under the signature of " Pacificus." Jefferson, find- ing Hamilton's influence predominant in Wash- ington's cabinet on this question as on others, finally retired from it. The opposition to the excise law having proceeded in western Penn- sylvania to the extent of armed resistance, it became necessary to call out a force to repress it; this operation was successfully conducted under Hamilton's eye in the autumn and win- ter of 1794. Having procured the adoption by congress of a system for the gradual redemp- tion of the public debt, and finding his salary insufficient for his support, after six years' ser- vice, Hamilton resigned his office, Jan. 31, 1795, and resumed the practice of the law in New York. He still remained, however, a warm supporter of Washington's administra- tion. On the question of the ratification of Jay's treaty, by which the country was soon after greatly shaken, he gave effectual aid to the president's policy of ratifying the treaty in a series of essays signed " Camillus." In the preparation of Washington's " Farewell Ad- dress," Hamilton's assistance -was asked and given, precisely to what extent has been and still is a matter of controversy. About the time of Adams's accession to the presidency, the charges against Hamilton of misbehavior as secretary of the treasury were renewed in a new and aggravated shape. While Giles was hunting up matter for his abortive resolutions some opposition members of congress, of whom Monroe was one, had fallen in with two per- sons named Clingman and Reynolds, who inti- mated that they were in possession of secrets very damaging to Hamilton's character. By way of confirmation Reynolds exhibited some notes in Hamilton's handwriting as proving a confidential correspondence between them. Under the idea that they had discovered a connection between Reynolds and Hamilton for speculation in public securities, in which while at the head of the treasury Hamilton could not legally engage, Monroe and his com- panions waited upon Hamilton to ask an ex- planation. He speedily convinced them, by the production of other letters, that the corre- spondence between himself and Reynolds had grown entirely out of an intrigue with Rey- nolds's wife, into which he had been entrapped. Though Monroe and his associates admitted that their suspicions of official misconduct were wholly removed, Monroe preserved certain memoranda of their interview with Reynolds, Clingman, and Hamilton; and these, having come by some unexplained means into the hands of Callender, a pamphleteer of the opposition, were published, with the intima- tion (based on an opinion expressed by Cling- man, in a conversation with Monroe after