CHAP. XV.]

DIVISION OF PARTIES.

633

considered the Bank question as that on which parties finally formed into avowed and permanent organization-though it is certain that the body of the "Republicans" continued long afterwards to vote for Government measures, when not of a particular class. In other words, the opposition was to the schemes of the Treasury Department-of Colonel Hamilton-not to the Government as a whole, or to the President. The following is Mr. Jefferson's history of the events of that period, immediately after giving the account of the Funding and Assumption schemes, already copied :

"Still the machine was not complete. The effect of the Funding system, and of the Assumption, would be temporary; it would be lost with the loss of the individual members whom it has enriched, and some engine of influence more permanent must be contrived, while these myrmidons were yet in place to carry it through all opposition. This engine was the Bank of the United States. All that history is known, so I shall say nothing about it. While the Government remained at Philadelphia, a selection of members of both Houses were constantly kept as directors, who, on every question interesting to that institution, or to the views of the Federal head, voted at the will of that head; and, together with the stockholding members, could always make the Federal vote that of the majority. By this combination, legislative expositions were given to the Constitution, and all the administrative laws were shaped on the model of England, and so passed. And from this influence we were not relieved, until the removal from the precincts of the Bank, to Washington.

"Here, then, was the real ground of the opposition which was made to the course of administration. Its object was to preserve the legislature pure and independent of the executive, to restrain the administration to republican forms and principles, and not permit the Constitution to be construed into a monarchy, and to be warped, in practice, into all the principles and pollutions of their favorite English model. Nor was this an opposition to General Washington. He was true to the republican charge confided to him; and has solemnly and repeatedly pro tested to me, in our conversations, that he would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it; and he did this the oftener and with the more earnestness, because he knew my suspicions of Hamilton's designs against it, and wished to quiet them. For he was not aware of the drift, or of the effect of Hamilton's schemes. Unversed in financial projects and calculations and budgets, his approbation of them was bottomed on his confidence in the man.

"But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption. In proof of this, I wili relate an anecdote, for the truth of which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out on his Southern tour in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the fourth of that month from Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and War, desiring that if any serious and important cases should arise during his absence, they should consult and act on them. And he requested that the Vice-President should also be consulted. This was the only occasion on which that officer was ever requested to take part in a Cabinet question. Some occasion for consultation arising, I invited

634

CABINET DIVISIONS.

[CHAP. XV.

those gentlemen (and the Attorney-General as well as I remember) to dine with me, in order to confer on the subject. After the cloth was removed, and our question agreed and dismissed, conversation began on other matters, and, by some circumstance, was led to the British Constitution, on which Mr. Adams observed: 'Purge that Constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect Constitution ever devised by the wit of man.' Hamilton paused and said: 'Purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.' And this was assuredly the exact line which separated the political creeds of these two gentlemen. The one was for two hereditary branches and an honest elective one: the other, for an hereditary King, with a House of Lords and Commons corrupted to his will, and standing between him and the people."

And here, in continuation, was Jefferson's matured conclusion (in 1818) of the political character of these two rivals and opponents, written when one of them had long been removed by death, and when he was on the most cordial terms of personal friendship with the other:

"Hamilton was, indeed, a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinte rested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched and perverted by the British example, as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation. Mr. Adams had originally been a Republican. The glare of royalty and nobility, during his mission to England, had made him believe their fascination a necessary ingredient in government; and Shay's rebellion, not suffi ciently understood where he then was, seemed to prove that the absence of want and oppression, was not a sufficient guarantee of order. His book on the American Constitutions having made known his political bias, he was taken up by the monarchical Federalists in his absence, and on his return to the United States, he was by them made to believe that the general disposition of our citizens was favorable to monarchy. He here wrote his Davila, as a supplement to a former work, and his election to the presidency confirmed him in his errors."

The different political theories and aims of the Secretary of State and of the Secretary of the Treasury, as soon as they were mutually understood, necessarily destroyed their political confidence in each other. Their friendly personal relations, how ever, survived for a period. Their sense of what was due to themselves, and to the President, led to circumspection in personal deportment. But even this state of things was not likely to last long. Neither had a spark of tolerance for the cardinal political doctrines of the other. Each probably saw in the other the strongest and most influential champion of a detested faith.

CHAP. XV.]

MANNERS OF ITS MEMBERS.

635

Jefferson was modest and unofficious, even to the point of retiringness, in manner'-had not a trace of dogmatism in his way of stating or defending a proposition-said very little in discussion-yielded quietly when outvoted-never intermeddled uninvited in the affairs of another department-and never, even in his own, assumed any airs or tone of leadership over colleagues. Yet, under this modest decorum, he was quite as independent as any of his colleagues in forming an opinion, and when his opinion was deliberately formed, it was as firm as adamant. If it was never advanced aggressively-after being voted down a hundred times in succession, it presented precisely the same degree of resistance as at first.

Hamilton probably never directly transcended the manners which gentlemen tolerate from each other in the heat of discussion. He possessed, however, not only that iron pertinacity ascribed to him by Morris both in regard to the substance and letter of his plans, but his natural imperiousness of temper fostered by rapid success and unceasing adulation, exhibited itself very plainly in his manners and conduct. He advanced his opinions dictatorially. When doubtful of success, he argued his side of the question in the President's Cabinet at the length, and with the vehemence of a jury lawyer. He did not scruple to intermeddle with even the direct conduct of important and delicate affairs belonging to the departments of colleagues, and, as we shall have occasion to see, he did this without their solicitation, and in some instances undoubtedly without their supposed knowledge. He obviously aimed at a sort of premiership in the Cabinet-to guide its general policy. To secure this, he trusted to his influence with the President, and to the very important weight he secured in public affairs by carrying along with his views majorities in the early Congresses. Congress was deeply influenced by the fact that Hamilton's views were supposed to represent the spontaneous ones of the Executive; and the support. which Congress gave those views, appeared to represent the popular will, and consequently reacted on the Executive.

Jefferson was never tenacious in respect to forms of official etiquette, and had the least possible degree of the jealousy of official or personal consequence. We shall not deny that he

Hamilton himself so described him in the first attacks he made on him in the news papers, as we shall hereafter see.

636

HAMILTON'S BRIEF POLITICAL SUCCESS.

[CHAP. XV. was intolerant towards ideas, but towards persons he was peculiarly tolerant-towards them his temper was always well regu lated and placable. We shall abundantly show, as the history of his life progresses, that he never had a foe or a persecutor so hitter, that he was not ready to drop the personal quarrel on the first overture to conciliation. In Hamilton's case, there is no doubt that for some time before their open breach, he felt his assumption and resented his encroachments. But he was not unwise enough to let vanity or petulance precipitate the explo sion. He waited calmly and patiently for the development of events, shunning any issue but an issue of principle.

Another circumstance protracted the seeming calm in the Cabinet. While Hamilton mixed constantly and actively in the affairs of Congress, which his departmental duties at this period brought him perhaps necessarily considerably more in contact with-while he, without concealment, marshalled and led a party-Jefferson, partly from taste, and partly from circumstances, scarcely interfered in any business before Congress, and none in active party arrangements. He never, at any period of his life, possessed an inclination to bustle about in caucuses-to act either as captain or drill-sergeant in the disciplinary labors of partisanship. In this respect he resembled the Republican leader in Congress, Mr. Madison. Besides, as Hamilton's schemes had, after their presentation to Congress, the ostensible sanction of the President, no other Cabinet officer could feel himself at liberty to engage in avowed or active opposition to them outside of the Cabinet. The two secretaries, therefore, were not brought into collision on this theatre.

For a period, Hamilton's political star was to shine broadly and luminously in the ascendant. He had the support of Congress, partly from the important reason already named, and partly because his schemes agreed with the real views, or appealed to the interests of a large number of that body. He had a devoted follower in every man enriched by the Funding Bill, the Assumption, the Bank, etc., or hoping to be enriched by any treasury scheme in future. The mercantile interest was on his side, especially the British merchants, because they believed that his measures had restored public credit, furnished a reliable circulating medium, and again given life to the currents of trade and commerce. The Consolidationists of every grade, from pure

CHAP. XV.]

CAUSES OF HIS SUCCESS.

637

Monarchists down to anti-State-right Republicans (believers in one great consolidated republic), rallied about him as a chief who was rapidly "propping" the Constitution to a substantial concurrence with their views. Those weak men, with unsettled political ideas, whose chief anxiety is to be on the winning side, were of course now on the side of Hamilton. And, finally, there was no inconsiderable class wholly separate from all of these, disinterested and intelligent men and true republicans in the constitutional sense of the term, who, for a considerable period, yet clung to him, because they believed in so doing they were clinging to the individual plans and wishes of the revered President.

1

Hamilton's last scheme, the bank, was, in the eye of his followers, even more brilliantly successful than any of its predecessors. Before the close of 1791 its scrip had risen to nearly one hundred per cent. above par, and such was the tendency to further inflation, and such the madness that ruled the hour, that Hamilton himself became alarmed, and besought his friends to pause and not convert the whole thing into a "bubble," and make final shipwreck of their "purses" and "reputations." " Prices rose so high, and public and private credit rose so high, that the country, yesterday miserably depressed in pecuniary affairs, suddenly overflowed with wealth. The transcendent genius of one man (such was the cry) turned all he touched into gold, so that the dreams of the alchemists stood visibly realized. What varied attainments and great qualities centered in that man! His genius to plan did not exceed his practical power to execute. He grasped the general and the detail, theory and fact, with the same undeviating accuracy. His nerve was equal to his foresight. The tide of deification even set backwards. The eagle eye and the indomitable will flashing along the ranks of war, had been so conspicuous that but one fame had eclipsed his, and the genuine Hamiltonians whispered, sotto voce, that the warlike fame of one had eclipsed his, only by borrowing from it. And now that same eagle eye was flashing along and through all the elements of national prosperity that the statistician could array for its inspection-quickly grouping their ordinary rules of action into theories, and on these founding

See his letter to King of August 7, 1791; to Duer, August 17th, etc. Hamilton's Works vol. v. pp. 476, 478, et passim.