a confirmation of what you apprehended, namely,
Mr. Macomb's failure. This misfortime has, I fear, a
long tail to it.

The enclosed, you will perceive, gives you addi-
tional latitude. The terms as heretofore for 6 per
cents., 205.; 3 per cents. 125.; and deferred 125. 6d.

You must judge of the best mode and manner of
applying the sum. The operation here not being ex-
tensive, I have found it best to eke out my aid. I
doubt whether this will answer with you. My reason
was to keep up men's spirits by appearing often,
though not much at one time. All is left to you.
You will doubtless be cautious in securing your
transfer before you pay.



5o8 Alexander Hamilton

TO THE DIRECTORS AND COMPANY OF THE BANK OF

NEW YORK

Treasury Department, April 12, 1792.

Gentlemen ;

Since my official letter to you authorizing an ad-
vance to your cashier of fifty thousand dollars, to be
applied to the purchase of public debt on account of
the United States, I have authorized that gentleman
to apply for another fifty thousand dollars, and to
make the like use of it. I now confirm this direction,
and add my desire that he may be furnished with a
further sum of fifty thousand dollars, making in the
whole one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the
whole for the purpose above mentioned.



TO WILLIAM DUER

April 22, 1792.

My Dear Duer:

I hoped ere this to have seen you, to have afforded
you whatever of aid could have resulted from my
advice, after knowing your real situation. But the
session protracts itself, and I can scarcely say when
it will finish. Lest the information contained in
my last should induce you to postpone an arrange-
ment with your creditors in the hope of speedily
having an opportunity of consulting me, I have
thought it best to apprise you of the degree of delay
which may attend my proposed visit to New York.
Indeed, I can hardly flatter myself that my advice
could be of any real importance to you.



Private Correspondence 5^9

How are you? How are your family? At a mo-
ment of composure I shall be glad to hear from you.

Eliza joins me in affectionate remembrances to
Lady Kitty.' Farewell.



TO WILLIAM SETON

Treasury Department, May lo, 1792.

Sir:

I received your letter of the yth inst., covering an
account of stock purchased by you for the United
States.

I observe that you have exceeded the sum which
was limited by me to the amount of one thousand and
ninety-eight dollars and eighty-nine cents; but so
small a difference is not very material, and I am
willing that the whole should remain on account of
the United States.

In order to a winding up of the business, I have
now to request that you will, as soon as it can be
conveniently done, cause all the stock to be trans-
ferred in the names of the trustees as heretofore, and
that you will then procure from the commissioner
and forward to me the necessary certificates for
transferring the stock from the books of the commis-
sioner to those of the treasurer.

^ " Lady Kitty" was Duer's wife. Mrs. Duer who was a beauty and
belle in the society of that day (see Griswold's Republican Court) was
Katherine Alexander, daughter of William Alexander, the unsuccessful
claimant to the earldom of Stirling. He was, as is well known, a dis-
tinguished officer in our war for independence, and was commonly
called "Lord Stirling," from which his youngest daughter came to be
known as "Lady Kitty."



5IO Alexander Hamilton

You will please to accept of my best acknowledg-
ment for this additional mark of your zeal for the
public service, and believe me to be, etc.



TO WILLIAM DUER

May 23, 1792.

My dear Duer, five minutes ago I received your
letter of yesterday. I hasten to express to you my
thoughts, as your situation does not permit of delay.
I am of opinion that those friends who have lent you
their money or security from personal confidence in
your honor, and without being interested in the
operations in which you may have been engaged,
ought to be taken care of absolutely, and preferably
to all creditors. In the next place, public institu-
tions ought to be secured. On this point the manu-
facturing society will claim peculiar regard. I am
told the funds of that society have been drawn out
of both banks; I trust they are not diverted. The
public interest and my reputation are deeply con-
cerned in the matter. Your affairs with the govern-
ment, as connected with your office as assistant to
the Board of Treasury, will deserve your particular
attention. Persons of whom you have made actual
purchases and whose property has been delivered to
you, would stand next after public institutions.
But here perhaps some arbitration may be made. It
would certainly be desirable to distinguish between
the price of stock at the time of purchase and its en-
hanced price upon time. With regard to contracts
merely executory, and in regard to which differences
would be to be paid, no stock having been delivered,



Private Correspondence 5^^

I postpone claims of this nature to all others. They
ought not to interfere with any claim which is
founded on value actually given. As to the usurious
tribe: these present themselves under different as-
pects. Are these women, or ignorant people, or
trustees of infants ? The real principal advanced
and legal interest would, in such cases, stand, in my
mind, on high ground. The mere veteran usurers
may be taken greater liberties with. Their real
principal and interest, however, abstracted from
usurious accumulation, would stand better than
claims constituted wholly by profits from specula-
tive bargains. But the following course deserves
consideration: Take care of debts to friends who
have aided you by their money or credit disinterest-
edly, and the public institutions. Assign the rest of
your property for the benefit of creditors generally.
The law will do the rest. Whenever usury can be
proved, the contract, I take it, will be null. Where
it cannot be proved, the parties will be obliged to
acknowledge on oath, and then their principal and
interest only will be due. Wherever a fair account
can be stated, and all the sums borrowed and paid
can be set against each other, it is probable it will be
found that more has been paid than, on a computa-
tion of legal interest, was ever received. Here, I
presume, the demand would be extinguished, and
possibly the parties would be compelled to disgorge.
These are rather desultory thoughts than a system-
atic view of the subject. I wish I had more time to
form a more digested opinion, but as I have not you
must take what I can give. Adieu, my unfortunate



512 Alexander Hamilton

friend. God bless you and extricate you with re-
putation. Again adieu. Be honorable, calm, and
firm.^



TO WILLIAM SETON

Philadelphia, May 25, 1792.

My Dear Sir:

The society for the establishmg of useful manu-
factures, at their last meeting resolved to borrow
a sum of five thousand dollars upon a pledge of de-
ferred stock. Mr. Walker is empowered to nego-
tiate the loan, and I expect application will be made
to the Bank of New York for it. I have a strong
wish that the directors of that bank may be disposed
to give facilities to this institution upon terms of
perfect safety to itself. I will add that from its
situation it is much the interest of our city that it
should succeed. It is not difficult to discern the
advantage of being the immediate market of a con-
siderable manufacturing town. A pledge of public
stock will completely fulfil the idea of perfect secur-
ity. I will add more, that in my opinion banks
ought to afford accommodation in such cases upon
easy terms of interest. I think five per cent, ought
to suffice, for a direct public good is presented. And
institutions of this kind, within reasonable limits,
ought to consider it as a principal object to promote
beneficial public purposes.

To you, my dear sir, I will not scruple to say in
confidence that the Bank of New York shall suffer no

I Reprinted from the History of the Republic, iv., 289.



Private Correspondence 5^3

diminution of its pecuniary facilities from any ac-
commodation it may afford to the society in ques-
tion. I feel my reputation much concerned in its
welfare.

I would not wish any formal communication of
this letter to the directors, but you may make
known my wishes to such of them as you may judge
expedient.

TO COLONEL EDWARD CARRINGTON '

Philadelphia, May 26, 1792.

My Dear Sir:

Believing that I possess a share of yo\ir personal
friendship and confidence, and yielding to that which
I feel towards you; persuaded also, that our political
creed is the same on two essential points — first, the
necessity of Union to the respectability and happi-
ness of this country, and second, the necessity of an
efficient general government to maintain the Union,
I have concluded to unbosom myself to you, on the
present state of political parties and views. I will
ask no reply to what I shall say ; I only ask that you
will be persuaded the representations I shall make
are agreeable to the real and sincere impressions of
my mind. You will make the due allowance for the
influence of circumstances upon it ; you will consult
your own observations, and you will draw such a
conclusion as shall appear to you proper. When I
accepted the office I now hold, it was under full per-
suasion, that from similarity of thinking, conspiring

' Col. Carrington, of Virginia, was an old and trusted friend of
Hamilton.

VOL. IX.— 33. j,^. .



514 Alexander Hamilton

with personal good-will, I should have the firm sup-
port of Mr. Madison, in the general course of my
administration. Aware of the intrinsic difficulties
of the situation, and of the powers of Mr. Madison, I
do not believe I should have accepted under a differ-
ent supposition. I have mentioned the similarity of
thinking between that gentleman and myself. This
was relative, not merely to the general principles of
national policy and government, but to the leading
points, which were likely to constitute questions in
the administration of the finances. I mean, first,
the expediency of funding the debt ; second, the in-
expediency of discrimination between original and
present holders; third, the expediency of assuming
the State debts.

As to the first point, the evidence of Mr. Madison's
sentiments, at one period, is to be found in the ad-
dress of Congress, of April twenty-sixth, seventeen
hundred and eighty- three, which was planned by
him, in conformity to his own ideas, and without any
previous suggestions from the committee, and with
his hearty co-operation in every part of the business.
His conversations upon various occasions since have
been expressive of a continuance in the same senti-
ment ; nor, indeed, has he yet contradicted it, by any
part of his official conduct. How far there is reason
to apprehend a change in this particular, will be
stated hereafter. As to the second part, the same
address is an evidence of Mr. Madison's sentiments
at the same period. And I had been informed that
at a later period he had been, in the Legislature of
Virginia, a strenuous and successful opponent of the



Private Correspondence 5^5

principle of discrimination. Add to this, that a
variety of conversations had taken place between
him and myself, respecting the public debt, down to
the commencement of the new government, in none
of which had he glanced at the idea of a change of
opinion. I wrote him a letter after my appointment,
in the recess of Congress, to obtain his sentiments
on the subject of the finances. In his answer, there
is not a lisp of his new system.

As to the third point, the question of an assump-
tion of the State debts by the United States was in
discussion when the convention that framed the
present government was sitting at Philadelphia, and
in a long conversation which I had with Mr. Madison
in an afternoon's walk, I well remember that we were
perfectly agreed in the expediency and propriety of
such a measure; though we were both of opinion
that it would be more advisable to make it a measure
of administration than an article of Constitution,
from the impolicy of multiplying obstacles to its re-
ception on collateral details.

Under these circumstances you will naturally
imagine that it must have been matter of surprise
to me when I was apprised that it was Mr. Madison's
intention to oppose my plan on both the last-men-
tioned points. Before the debate commenced,' I
had a conversation with him on my report; in the
course of which I alluded to the calculation I had

I Hamilton to Madison: "If Mr. Madison should be disengaged this
evening. Mr. Hamilton would be obliged by an opportunity of con-
versing with him at his lodgings for half an hour. If engaged this
evening he will thank him to say whether to-morrow evening will smt.
Wednesday."



5i6 Alexander Hamilton

made of his sentiments, and the grounds of that cal-
culation. He did not deny them ; but alleged in his
justification that the very considerable alienation of
the debt, subsequent to the periods at which he had
opposed a discrimination, had essentially changed
the state of the question ; and that as to the assump-
tion, he had contemplated it to take place as matters
stood at the peace. While the change of opinion
avowed on the point of discrimination diminished
my respect for the force of Mr. Madison's mind and
the soundness of his judgment; and while the idea
of reserving and setting afloat a vast mass of already
extinguished debt, as the condition of a measure,
the leading objects of which were an accession of
strength to the national government, and an assur-
ance of order and vigor in the national finances, by
doing away with the necessity of thirteen complicated
and conflicting systems of finance, appeared to me
somewhat extraordinary, yet my previous impres-
sions of the fairness of Mr. Madison's character, and
my reliance on his good-will towards me, disposed me
to believe that his suggestions were sincere, and even
on the point of an assumption of the debts of the
States as they stood at the peace, to lean towards
a co-operation in his views, till on feeling the ground
I found the thing impracticable, and on further re-
flection I thought it liable to immense difficulties.
It was tried and failed with little countenance.

At this time and afterwards repeated intimations
were given to me that Mr. Madison, from a spirit of
rivalship, or some other cause, had become person-
ally unfriendly to me; and one gentleman in par-



Private Correspondence 517

ticular, whose honor I have no reason to doubt,
assured me that Mr. Madison, in a conversation with
him, had made a pretty direct attempt to insinuate
unfavorable impressions of me. Still I suspended
my opinion on the subject. I knew the malevolent
officiousness of mankind too well to yield a very
ready acquiescence to the suggestions which were
made, and resolved to wait till time and more ex-
perience should afford a solution. It was not till the
last session that I became unequivocally convinced
of the following truth: "that Mr. Madison, co-
operating with Mr. Jefferson, is at the head of a fac-
tion decidedly hostile to me and my administration;
and actuated by views, in my judgment, subversive
of the principles of good government and dangerous
to the Union, peace, and happiness of the country."

These are strong expressions, they may pain your
friendship for one or both of the gentlemen whom I
have named. I have not lightly resolved to hazard
them. They are the result of a serious alarm in my
mind for the public welfare, and of a full conviction
that what I have alleged is a truth, and a truth
which ought to be told, and well attended to by
all the friends of the Union and efficient national
government. The suggestion will, I hope, at least,
awaken attention free from the bias of former pre-
possessions.

This conviction, in my mind, is the result of a
long train of circumstances, many of them minute.
To attempt to detail them all would fill a volume.
I shall therefore confine myself to the mention of a
few.



5i8 Alexander Hamilton

First. — As to the point of opposition to me and
my administration.

Mr. Jefferson, with very little reserve, manifests
his dislike of the funding system generally, calling in
question the expediency of funding a debt at all.
Some expressions, which he has dropped in my pre-
sence (sometimes without sufficient attention to
delicacy), will not permit me to doubt on this point
representations which I have had from various re-
spectable quarters. I do not mean that he advo-
cates directly the undoing of what has been done,
but he censures the whole, on principles which, if
they should become general, could not but end in
the subversion of the system. In various conversa-
tions, with foreigners as well as citizens, he has
thrown censure on my principles of government and
on my measures of administration. He has pre-
dicted that the people would not long tolerate my
proceedings, and that I should not long maintain
my ground. Some of those whom he immediately
and notoriously moves have even whispered sus-
picions of the rectitude of my motives and conduct.
In the question concerning the bank he not only
delivered an opinion in writing against its constitu-
tionality and expediency, but he did it in a style and
manner which I felt as partaking of asperity and
ill humor toward me. As one of the trustees of the
sinking fund, I have experienced in almost every
leading question opposition from him. When any
turn of things in the community has threatened
either odium or embarrassment to me, he has not
been able to suppress the satisfaction which it gave



Private Correspondence 519

him. A part of this is, of course, information, and
might be misrepresentation, but it comes through so
many channels, and so well accords with what falls
under my own observation, that I can entertain no
doubt.

I find a strong confirmation in the following cir-
cumstances: Freneau, the present printer of the
National Gazette, who was a journeyman with Childs
& Swain, at New York, was a known Anti-federalist.
It is reduced to a certainty that he was brought to
Philadelphia by Mr. Jefferson to be the conductor of
a newspaper. It is notorious that contemporarily
with the commencement of his paper he was a clerk
in the Department of State, for foreign languages.
Hence a clear inference that his paper has been set
on foot and is conducted under the patronage and
not against the views of Mr. Jefferson. What then
is the complexion of this paper? Let any impartial
man peruse all the numbers down to the present day,
and I never was more mistaken if he does not pro-
nounce that it is a paper devoted to the subversion
of me and the measures in which I have had an
agency ; and I am little less mistaken if he does not
pronounce that it is a paper of a tendency generally
unfriendly to the government of the United States.
It may be said that a newspaper being open to all
the publications which are offered to it, its com-
plexion may be influenced by other views than those
of the editor. But the fact here is that whenever
the editor appears it is in a correspondent dress.
The paragraphs which appear as his own, the pub-
lications, not original, which are selected for his



520 Alexander Hamilton

press, are of the same malignant and unfriendly
aspect ; so as not to leave a doubt of the temper
which directs the publication. Again, Brown, who
publishes an evening paper called The Federal Ga-
zette, was originally a zealous Federalist, and person-
ally friendly to me. He has been employed by Mr.
Jefferson as a printer to the government for the pub-
lication of the laws, and for some time past, until
lately, the complexion of his press was equally bitter
and unfriendly to me and to the government.

Lately Col. Pickering, in consequence of certain
attacks upon him, got hold of some instances of mal-
conduct of his which have served to hold him in
check, and seemed to have varied his tone a little. I
don't lay so much stress on this last case as on the
former. There I find an internal evidence, which is
as conclusive as can be expected in any similar case.
Thus far as to Mr. Jefferson.

With regard to Mr. Madison, the matter stands
thus: I have not heard, but in the one instance to
which I have alluded, of his having held language
unfriendly to me in private conversation, but in his
public conduct there has been a more uniform and
persevering opposition than I have been able to
resolve into a sincere difference of opinion. I can-
not persuade myself that Mr. Madison and I, whose
politics had formerly so much the same point of de-
parture, should now diverge so widely in o\xr opinions
of the measures which are proper to be pursued.
The opinion I once entertained of the candor and
simplicity and fairness of Mr. Madison's character,
has, I acknowledge, given way to a decided opinion



Private Correspondence 521

that it is one of a peculiarly artificial and com-
plicated kind. For a considerable part of the last
session Mr. Madison lay in a great measure perdu.
But it was evident from his votes and a variety of
little movements and appearances, that he was the
prompter of Mr. Giles and others who were the open
instruments of the opposition. Two facts occurred
in the course of the session which I view as unequi-
vocal demonstrations of his disposition towards me.
In one, a direct and decisive blow was aimed. When
the Department of the Treasury was established,
Mr. Madison was an unequivocal advocate of the
principles which prevailed in it, and of the powers
and duties which were assigned by it to the head of
the department. This appeared, both from his
private and public discourse, and I will add, that I
have personal evidence that Mr. Madison is as well
convinced as any man in the United States of the
necessity of the arrangement which characterizes
that establishment, to the orderly conducting of the
business of the finances. Mr. Madison nevertheless
opposed a reference to me to report ways and means
for the Western expedition, and combated, on prin-
ciple, the propriety of such references.

He well knew that if he had prevailed a certain
consequence was my resignation; that I would not
be fool enough to make pecuniary sacrifices and en-
dure a life of extreme drudgery without opportunity
either to do material good or to acquire reputation,
and frequently with a responsibility in reputation for
measures in which I had no hand, and in respect to
which the part I had acted, if any, could not be



522 Alexander Hamilton

known. To accomplish this point an effectual train,
as was supposed, was laid. Besides those who or-
dinarily acted under Mr. Madison's banners, several
who had generally acted with me, from various
motives — vanity, self-importance, etc., etc., — were
enlisted.

My overthrow was anticipated as certain, and Mr.
Madison, laying aside his wonted caution, boldly led
his troops, as he imagined, to a certain victory. He
was disappointed. Though late, I became apprised
of the danger. Measures of counteraction were
adopted, and when the question was called Mr. Madi-
son was confounded to find characters votmg against
him whom he counted upon as certain. Towards the
close of the session another, though a more covert,
attack was made. It was in the shape of a proposi-
tion to insert in the supplementary act respecting
the public debt something by way of instruction to the
trustees "to make their purchases of the debt at
the lowest market price." In the course of the dis-
cussion of this point Mr. Madison dealt much in in-
sidious insinuations calculated to give an impression
that the public money, under my particular direc-
tion, had been unfaithfully applied to put undue
advantages in the pockets of speculators, and to
support the debt at an artificial price for their bene-
fit. The whole manner of this transaction left no
doubt in any one's mind that Mr. Madison was act-
uated by personal and political animosity. As to
this last instance, it is but candid to acknowledge
that Mr. Madison had a better right to act the enemy
than on any former occasion. I had, some short time



Private Correspondence 523

before, subsequent to his conduct respecting the
reference, declared openly my opinion of the views
by which he was actuated towards me, and my de-
termination to consider and treat him as a political
enemy. An intervening proof of Mr. Madison's un-
friendly intrigues to my disadvantage is to be found