Chapter XIX: Book IV: "alexander the Great" (6)

But Mrs. Croix knew them. In her management of Hamilton she made few mistakes, passionately as she loved him. It was in her secluded presence he stormed himself cool, was indignantly sympathized with first, then advised, then soothed. He was made to understand that the more he revealed the black and implacable deeps of his nature, the more was he worshipped, the more keen the response from other and not dissimilar deeps. His wife was necessary to him in many ways, his Egeria in many more. Although he would have sacrificed the last to the first, had it come to an issue, he would have felt as if one-half of him had been cruelly divorced. Few women understand this dual nature in men, and few are the men who do not. It has been known to exist in those who make no pretensions to genius, and in Hamilton was as natural as the versatility of his intellect. When with one he locked the other in the recesses of his mind as successfully as when at college he had accomplished herculean feats of mental accumulation by keeping but one thing before his thought at a time. What he wanted he would have, so long as his family were in no way affected; and had it not been for Mrs. Croix at this time, it might have been worse for Betsey. She cooled his fevers; her counsel was always sound. And her rooms and herself were beautiful. She had her way of banishing the world by drawing her soft blue curtains and lighting her many candles. Had she been a fool, Hamilton would have tired of her in a month; as it was, he often thought of her as the most confidential and dispensing of his friends, and no more.

During the preceding two years of their acquaintance there had been many quarrels, caused by furious bursts of temper on the part of the lady, when Hamilton forgot her for a month or more. There were times when she was the solitary woman of Earth, and others when she might have reigned on Mars. He was very busy, and he had countless interests to absorb time and thought. He never pretended to more than a romantic passion for her, and deep as was her own infatuation, it was sometimes close to hate; for she was a woman whose vanity was as strong as her passions. At this time, however, he felt a frequent need of her, and she made the most of the opportunity.

XXIV

Meanwhile, Washington, deeply disturbed by the arguments in the press and Congress against the constitutionality of the National Bank, had privately asked for the written opinions of Jefferson and Randolph, and for a form of veto from Madison. They were so promptly forthcoming that they might have been biding demand. Washington read them carefully, then, too worried and impatient for formalities, carried them himself to Hamilton's house.

"For God's sake read them at once and tell me what they amount to," he said, throwing the bundle of papers on the table. "Of course you must prepare me an answer in writing, but I want your opinion at once. I will wait."

Long years after, when Betsey was an old woman, someone asked her if she remembered any incidents in connection with the establishment of the great Bank. She replied, "Yes, I remember it all distinctly. One day General Washington called at the house, looking terribly worried. He shut himself up in the study with my husband for hours, and they talked nearly all the time. When he went away he looked much more cheerful. That night my husband did not go to bed at all, but sat up writing; and the next day we had a Bank."

Hamilton's answer, both verbally and in a more elaborate form, was so able and sound a refutation of every point advanced by the enemy that Washington hesitated no longer and signed the bill during the last moments remaining to him. Years later, when the same question was raised again, Chief Justice Marshall, the most brilliant ornament, by common consent, the Supreme Court of the United States has had, admitted that he could add nothing to Hamilton's argument. It must, also, have convinced Madison; for while President of the United States, and his opportunity for displaying the consistencies of his intellect, unrivalled, he signed the charter of the Second National Bank. Monroe, whose party was in power, and able to defeat any obnoxious measure of the Federalists, advocated; the second Bank as heartily as he had cursed the first. His defence of his conduct was a mixture of insolent frankness and verbiage. He said: "As to the constitutional objection, it formed no serious obstacle. In voting against the Bank in the first instance, I was governed essentially by policy. The construction I gave to the Constitution I considered a strict one. In the latter instance it was more liberal but, according to my judgement, justified by its powers." If anyone can tell what he meant, doubtless his own shade would be grateful.

Hamilton's second Report on the Public Credit had beer buffeted about quite as mercilessly as the Report in favour of a bank. The customs officers had, during the past year collected $1,900,000, which sufficed to pay two-thirds of the annual expenses of the Government. There was still a deficit of $826,000, and to meet future contingencies of a similar nature, the Secretary of the Treasury urged the passage of an Excise Bill.

Even his enemies admired his courage, for no measure could be more unpopular, raise more widespread wrath. It was regarded as a deliberate attempt to deprive man of his most cherished vice; and every argument was brought forth in opposition, from the historic relation of whiskey to health and happiness, to the menace of adopting another British measure. The bill passed; but it was a different matter to enforce it, as many an excise officer reflected, uncheerfully, whilst riding a rail. On the 28th of January Hamilton sent in his Report in favour of the establishment of a mint, with details so minute that he left the framers of the necessary bill little excuse for delay; but it had the same adventurous and agitated experience of its predecessors, and only limped through, in an amended form, after the wildest outburst of democratic fanaticism which any of the measures of Hamilton had induced. The proposition to stamp the coins with the head of the President was conclusive of an immediate design to place a crown upon the head of Washington. Doubtless the leaders of the Federal party, under the able tuition of their despot, had their titles ready, their mine laid. Jefferson, in the Cabinet, protested with such solemn persistence against so dangerous a precedent, and Hamilton perforated him with such arrows of ridicule, that Washington exploded with wrath, and demanded to know if neither never intended to yield a point to the other.

During this session of Congress, Hamilton also sent in Reports on Trade with India and China, and on the Dutch Loan. He was fortunate in being able to forget his enemies for days and even weeks at a time, when his existence was so purely impersonal that every capacity of his mind, save the working, slept soundly. By now, he had his department in perfect running order; and his successors have accepted his legacy, with its infinitude of detail, its unvarying practicality, with gratitude and trifling alterations. When Jefferson disposed himself in the Chair of State, in 1801, he appointed Albert Gallatin--the ablest financier, after Hamilton, the country has produced--Secretary of the Treasury, and begged him to sweep the department clean of the corruption amidst which Hamilton had sat and spun his devilish schemes. Gallatin, after a thorough and conscientious search for political microbes, informed his Chief that in no respect could the department be improved, that there was not a trace of crime, past or present. Jefferson was disconcerted; but, as a matter of fact, his administrations were passed complacently amidst Hamilton legacies and institutions. Jefferson's hour had come. He could undo all that he had denounced in his rival as monarchical, aristocratical, pernicious to the life of Democracy. But the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, ran from first to last on those Federal wheels which are still in use, protected within and without by Federal institutions. But their architect was sent to his grave soon after the rise of his arch-enemy to power, was beyond humiliation or party triumph; it would be folly to war with a spirit, and greater not to let well enough alone. But that is a far cry. Meanwhile the Bank was being rushed through, and its establishment was anticipated with the keenest interest, and followed by a season of crazy speculation, dissatisfaction, and vituperation. But this Hamilton had expected, and he used his pen constantly to point out the criminal folly and inevitable consequences of speculation.

XXV

Congress adjourned while the excitement was at its height. Washington went to Mount Vernon, the Cabinet scattered, and there was an interval of peace. Philadelphia in summer was always unhealthy, and liable to an outbreak of fever at any moment. Hamilton sent his family to the Schuyler estate at Saratoga. Mrs. Croix had gone as early as May to the New England coast; for even her magnificent constitution had felt the strain of that exciting session, and Philadelphia was not too invigorating in winter. Hamilton remained alone in his home, glad of the abundant leisure which the empty city afforded to catch up with the arrears of his work, to design methods for financial relief against the time to apply them, and to prepare his Report on Manufactures, a paper destined to become as celebrated and almost as widespread in its influence as the great Report on Public Credit. It required days and nights of thinking, research, correspondence, comparison, and writing; and how in the midst of all this mass of business, this keen anxiety regarding the whirlwind of speculation--which was involving some of the leading men in the country, and threatening the young Government with a new disaster; how, while sitting up half the night with his finger on the public pulse, waiting for the right moment to apply his remedies, he managed to entangle himself in a personal difficulty, would be an inscrutable mystery, were any man but Alexander Hamilton in question.

I shall not enter into the details of the Reynolds affair. No intrigue was ever less interesting. Nor should I make even a passing allusion to it, were it not for its political ultimates. A couple of blackmailers laid a trap for the Secretary of the Treasury, and he walked into it, as the wisest of men have done before and since, when the woman has been sufficiently attractive at the right moment. This woman was common and sordid, but she was young and handsome, and her affectation of violent attachment, if ungrammatical, was plausible enough to convince any man accustomed to easy conquest; and the most astute of men, provided his passions be strong enough, can be fooled by any woman at once designing and seductive. Ardent susceptibility was in the very essence of Hamilton, with Scotland and France in his blood, the West Indies the mould of his youthful being, and the stormy inheritance of his parents.

But although Hamilton might succumb to a woman of Mrs. Reynold's type, she could not hold him. After liberally relieving the alleged pecuniary distress of this charmer, and weary of her society, he did his best to get rid of her. She protested. So did he. It was then that he was made aware of the plot The woman's husband appeared, and announced that only a thousand dollars would heal his wounded honour, and that if it were not immediately forthcoming, he would write to Mrs. Hamilton.

Hamilton was furious. His first impulse was to tell the man to do his worst, for anything in the nature of coercion stripped him for the fray at once. But an hour of reflection cooled his blood. No one was to blame but himself. If he had permitted himself to be made a fool of, it was but just that he should take the consequences, and not cruelly wound the woman he loved the better for his vagaries. Moreover, such a scandal would seriously affect the high office he filled, might indeed force him to resignation; not only thwarting his great ambitions, but depriving the country of services which no other man had the ability or the will to render. And a few moments forecast of the triumph of his enemies, not only over himself but possibly over his party, in case of his downfall, was sufficient in itself to force him to terms. Few are the momentous occasions in which men are governed by a single motive. Hamilton's ambitions were welded into the future happiness and glory of the country he had so ardently adopted. And if love of power was his ruling passion, it certainly was directed to the loftiest of ends. To desire to create a nation out of the resources of a vast understanding, controlled by wisdom and honour, is an ambition which should be dignified with a higher name. Small and purely personal ambitions were unknown to Hamilton, his gifts were given him for the elevation of the human race; but he would rather have reigned in hell than have sunk to insignificance on earth. As he remarked once to Kitty Livingston, the complexity of man so far exceeds that of the average woman, complexity being purely a matter of brain and having no roots whatever in sex, that it were a waste of valuable time to analyze its ramifications, and the crossings and entanglements of its threads. Hamilton paid the money, yielded further to the extent of several hundred dollars, then the people disappeared, and he hoped that he had heard the last of them. Fortunately his habits were methodical, the result of his mercantile training on St. Croix, and he preserved the correspondence.

XXVI

Hamilton looked forward to the next Congressional term with no delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade, arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of their astonishment, humiliation, and impotent fury at the successive victories of the invulnerable Secretary of the Treasury, than had Hamilton himself. He knew that they had confidently hoped to beat him by their combined strength and unremitting industry, and by the growing power of their party, before the finish of the preceding term. The Federalists no longer had their former majority in Congress upon all questions, for many of the men who, under that title, had been devoted adherents of the Constitution, were become alarmed at the constant talk of the monarchical tendencies of the Government, of the centralizing aristocratic measures of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the "unrepublican" formalities and elegance of Washington's "Court," at his triumphal progresses through the country, and at the enormous one-man power as exhibited in the person of Hamilton. Upon these minds Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had worked with unremitting subtlety. It was not so much that the early Federalists wished to see Hamilton dragged from his lofty position, for they admired him, and were willing to acknowledge his services to the country; but that the idea grew within them that he must be properly checked, lest they suddenly find themselves subjects again. They realized that they had been running to him for advice upon every matter, great and insignificant, since the new Congress began its sittings, and that they had adopted the greater part of his counsels without question; they believed that Hamilton was becoming the Congress as he already was the Administration; and overlooked the fact that legislative authority as against executive had no such powerful supporter as the Secretary of the Treasury. But it was not an era when men reasoned as exhaustively as they might have done. They were terrified by bogies, and the blood rarely was out of their heads. "Monarchism must be checked," and Hamilton for some months past had watched the rapid welding of the old anti-Federalists and the timid Federalists into what was shortly to be known, for a time, as the Republican party. That Jefferson had been at work all summer, as during the previous term, with his subtle, insinuating, and convincing pen, he well knew, and for what the examples of such men as Jefferson and Madison counted--taking their stand on the high ground of stemming the menace to personal liberties. The Republican party was to be stronger far than the old anti-Federal, for it was to be a direct and constant appeal to the controlling passion of man, vanity; and Hamilton believed that did it obtain the reins of power too early in the history of the Nation, confusion, if not anarchy, would result: not only was it too soon to try new experiments, diametrically opposed to those now in operation, but, under the tutelage of Jefferson, the party was in favour of vesting more power in the masses. Hamilton had no belief in entrusting power to any man or body of men that had not brains, education, and a developed reasoning capacity. He was a Republican but not a Democrat. He recognized, long before the rival party saw their mistake in nomenclature, that this Jefferson school marked the degeneracy of republicanism into democracy. Knowing how absurd and unfounded was all the hysterical talk about monarchism, and that time would vindicate the first Administration and its party as Republican in its very essence, he watched with deep, and often with impersonal, uneasiness the growth of a party which would denationalize the government, scatter its forces, and interpret the Constitution in a fashion not intended by the most protesting of its framers. Hamilton had in an extraordinary degree the faculty which Spencer calls representativeness; but there were some things he could not foresee, and one was that when the Republicans insinuated themselves to power they would rest on their laurels, let play the inherent conservatism of man, and gladly accept the goods the Federal party had provided them. The three men who wrote and harangued and intrigued against Hamilton for years, were to govern as had they been the humblest of Hamiltonians. But this their great antagonist was in unblest ignorance of, for he, too, reasoned in the heat and height and thick of the fray; and he made himself ready to dispute every inch of the ground, checkmate every move, force Jefferson into retirement, and invigorate and encourage his own ranks. The majority in both Houses was still Federal, if diminished, and he determined that it should remain so.

As early as October his watching eye caught the first flash in the sunlight of a new blade in the enemies' armoury. One Freneau had come to town. He had some reputation as a writer of squibs and verses, and Hamilton knew him to be a political hireling utterly without principle. When, therefore, he heard incidentally that this man had lately been in correspondence and conference with the Virginian junta, and particularly that he had been "persuaded by his old friend Madison to settle in Philadelphia," had received an appointment as translating clerk in the Department of State, and purposed to start a newspaper called the _National Gazette_ in opposition to Fenno's Administration organ, _The United States Gazette_, he knew what he was to expect. Fenno's paper was devoted to the Administration, and to the Secretary of the Treasury in particular; it was the medium through which Hamilton addressed most of his messages to the people. Naturally it was of little use to his enemies; and that Jefferson and his aides had realized the value of an organ of attack, he divined very quickly. He stated his suspicions to Washington immediately upon the President's arrival, and warned him to expect personal assault and abuse.

"There is now every evidence of a strong and admirably organized cabal," he added. "And to pull us down they will not stop at abuse of even you, if failure haunts them. I shall get the most of it, perhaps all. I hope so, for I am used to it."

He laughed, and quite as light-heartedly as ever; but Washington looked at him with uneasiness.

"You are a terrible fighter, Hamilton," he said. "I have never seen or dreamed of your equal. Why not merely oppose to them a massive resistance? Why be continually on the warpath? They give you a tentative scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever. When you are alone with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of a thousand years in your brain, and I doubt if at such times you remember your name; you are one of the greatest, wisest, coolest statesmen of any age; but the moment you come forth to the open, you are not so much a political leader as a warlike Scot at the head of his clan, and readier by far to make a dash into the neighbouring fastness than to wait for an attack. Are you and Jefferson going to fight straight through this session?--for if you are, I shall no longer yearn so much for the repose of Mount Vernon as for the silences of the tomb."

Washington spoke lightly, as he often did when they were alone, and he had returned from Virginia refreshed; but Hamilton answered contritely:--

"We both behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you should bear the brunt of it. I'll do my best to control myself in the Cabinet--although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight at the head of my party. Oh! Can the leopard change his spots? I fear I shall die with my back against the wall, sir, and my boots on." "I haven't the slightest doubt of it. But be careful of giving too free and constant a play to your passions and your capacity for rancour, or your character will deteriorate. Tell me," he added abruptly, narrowing his eyes and fixing Hamilton with a prolonged scrutiny, "do you not feel its effects already?"

By this time the early, half-unwilling, half-magnetized affection which the boy in Hamilton had yielded to his Chief had given place to a consistent admiration for the exalted character, the wisdom, justice, and self-control of the President of the United States, and to a devoted attachment. The bond between the two men grew closer every day, and only the end of all things severed it. Hamilton, therefore, replied as frankly as if Washington had asked his opinion on the temper of the country, instead of probing the sacred recesses of his spirit:--

"There have been times when I have sat down and stared into myself with horror; when I have felt as if sitting in the ruins of my nature. I have caught myself up again and again, realizing where I was drifting. I have let a fiend loose within me, and I have turned upon it at times with a disgust so bitter and a terror so over-mastering that the mildness which has resulted has made me feel indifferent and even amiable to mine enemies. Whether this intimate knowledge of myself will save me, God knows; but when some maddening provocation comes, after reaction has run its course, I rage more hotly than ever, and only a sense of personal dignity keeps me from using my fists. I am two-thirds passion, and I am afraid that in the end it will consume me. I live so intensely, in my best and my worst! I would give all I possess for your moderation and balance."

"No, you would not," said Washington. "War is the breath of your nostrils, and peace would kill you. Not that the poise I have acquired brings me much peace in these days."

Hamilton, who had spoken dejectedly, but with the deep relief which every mortal feels in a moment of open and safe confession, sprang to his feet, and stood on the hearth rug, his eyes sparkling with humour. "Confess, sir," he cried gaily. "You do not like Jefferson any better than I do. Fancy him opposite to you day after day, stinging you with honeyed shafts and opposing you with obstacle after obstacle, while leering with hypocrisy. Put yourself in my place for an instant, and blame me if you can."

"Oh," said Washington, with a deep growl of disgust, "o-h-h!" But he would not discuss his Secretary of State, even with Hamilton.

XXVII

The bombardment from Freneau's _Gazette_ opened at once. It began with a general assault upon the Administration, denouncing every prominent member in turn as a monarchist or an aristocrat, and every measure as subversive of the liberties of the country. Vice-President Adams received a heavy broadside, his "Discourses on Davila," with their animadversions upon the French Revolution in particular and Democracy in general, being regarded as a heinous offence against the spirit of his country, and detrimental to the political morals of the American youth. But although the _Gazette_ kept up its pretence of being an anti-Administration organ, publishing in the interests of a deluded people, it soon settled down to abuse of Hamilton.

That a large number of the articles were from Jefferson's damning pen few of the Republican leader's friends denied with any warmth, and the natural deductions of history would have settled the question, had not Freneau himself confessed the truth in his old age. What Jefferson did not write, he or Madison inspired, and Freneau had a lively pen of his own. They had promising material in General St. Clair's recent and disastrous defeat by the Indians, which, by a triumph of literary ingenuity, was ascribed to the ease and abundance with which the Secretary of the Treasury had caused money to circulate. But a far stronger weapon for their malignant use was the ruinous speculation which had maddened the country since the opening of the Bank of the United States. It was not enough that the Bank was a monarchical institution, a machine for the corruption of the Government, a club of grasping and moneyed aristocrats, but it had been purposely designed for the benefit of the few--the "corrupt squadron," namely, the Secretary and his friends--at the expense of the many. The subsequent failure for $3,000,000 of one of these friends, William Duer, gave them no pause, for his ruin precipitated a panic, and but added distinction to his patron's villany.

For a time Hamilton held his peace. He had enough to do, steering the financial bark through the agitated waters of speculation, without wasting time on personal recrimination. Even when, before the failure, he was accused of being in secret partnership with Duer, he did not pause for vindication, but exerted himself to alleviate the general distress. He initiated the practice, followed by Secretaries of the Treasury at the present moment, of buying Government loan certificates in different financial centres throughout the country, thus easing the money market, raising the price of the certificates, and strengthening the public credit. He used the sinking-fund for this purpose.

There was comparative peace in the Cabinet, an armed truce being, perhaps, a more accurate description of an uneasy psychological condition. Hamilton had made up his mind not only to spare Washington further annoyance, if possible, but to maintain a dignity which he was keenly conscious of having relinquished in the past. The two antagonists greeted each other politely when they met for the first time in the Council Chamber, although they had crossed the street several times previously to avoid meeting; and if Jefferson discoursed unctiously and at length, whenever the opportunity offered, upon the lamentable consequences of a lamentable measure, and indulged in melancholy prognostications of a general ruin, in which the Government would disappear and be forgotten, Hamilton replied for a time with but an occasional sarcasm, and a change of subject. One day, however, a long-desired opportunity presented itself, and he did not neglect it. He was well aware that Jefferson had complained to Virginia that he had been made to hold a candle to the wily Secretary of the Treasury in the matter of assumption, in other words, that his guileless understanding, absorbed in matters of State, had been duped into a bargain of which Virginia did not approve, despite the concession to the Potomac.

About two months after Congress opened, Washington, as his Cabinet seated itself, was detained in his room with a slight indisposition, but sent word that he would appear presently. For a time, Randolph and Knox talked feverishly about the Indian troubles, while Hamilton looked over some notes, and Jefferson watched his antagonist covertly, as if anticipating a sudden spring across the table. Hamilton was not in a good humour. He was accustomed to abuse in Congress, and that it was again in full tide concerned him little, for he was sure of ultimate victories in both Houses; and words which were powerless to result in a defeat for himself, or his party, he treated with the scorn which impotence deserved. But it was another matter to have his private character assailed day after day in the press, to watch a subtle pen insinuate into the public mind that a woman imperilled her reputation in receiving him, and that he was speculating in secret with the reckless friend whom he had warned over and over, and begged to desist. Freneau sent him three copies of the _Gazette_ daily, lest he miss something, and he had that morning left Betsey in tears. Fenno was fighting the Secretary's battles valiantly; but there was only one pen in America which could cope with Jefferson's, and that was Hamilton's own. But aside from his accumulating cares, it was a strife to which he did not care to descend. To-day, however, he needed but a match, and Jefferson, who experienced a fearful fascination in provoking him, applied it.

"I hear that Duer is on the verge of failure," he remarked sadly.

"Yes," said Hamilton; "he is."

"I hold it to be a great misfortune that he has been connected with the Administration in any way."

"His connection was quite distinct from your department. I alone was responsible for his appointment as my assistant. There is no necessity for you to shed any hypocritical tears."

"What concerns the honour of the Administration naturally concerns the Secretary of State."

"There is no question of honour. If Duer fails, he will fail honourably, and the Administration, with which he is no longer connected, will in no way be involved."

"Of those facts of course I am sure, but I fear the reflections in the press."

"Keep your own pen worthily employed, and the Administration will take care of itself."

"I do not understand you, sir," said Jefferson, with great dignity.

"I am quite ready to be explicit. Keep your pen out of Freneau's blackguard sheet, while you are sitting at Washington's right hand, at all events--"

Jefferson had elevated both hands. "I call Heaven to witness," he cried, "this black aspersion upon my character is, has been, entirely a production of the imagination of my enemies. I have never written nor inspired a line in Mr. Freneau's paper."

Hamilton laughed and returned to his notes.

"You do not believe me, sir?" demanded Jefferson, the blood boiling slowly to his large face.

"No," said Hamilton; "I do not."

Jefferson brought his mighty fist down upon the table with a bang." Sir!" he exclaimed, his husky voice unpleasantly strained, "I have stood enough from you. Are you aware that you have called me a liar, sir? I have suffered at your hands since the day I set foot in this country. I left the peace and retirement that I love, to come forth in response to a demand upon my duty, a demand I have ever heeded, and what has been my reward? The very first act I was tricked into committing was a crime against my country--"

"Were you in your dotage, sir?" thundered Hamilton, springing to his feet, and bringing his own hand down with such violence that the lead in his cuff dented his wrist. "Was your understanding enfeebled with age, that you could not comprehend the exhaustive explanation I made of the crisis in this country's affairs? Did I not give you twenty-four hours in which to think it over? What were you doing--muddling your brains with French wines?--that you could not reason clearly when relieved of my baleful fascination? Were you not protected on the following day by two men, who were more your friends than mine? I proposed a straightforward bargain, which you understood as well then as you do now. You realized to the full what the interests of the country demanded, and in a rare moment of disinterested patriotism you agreed to a compromise in which you saw no detriment to yourself. What you did not anticipate was the irritation of your particular State, and the annoyance to your vanity of permitting a younger man to have his way. Now let me hear no more of this holding a candle, and the tricking of an open mind by a wily one, unless you are willing to acknowledge that your brain was too weak to grasp a simple proposition; in which case you had better resign from public office."

"I know that is what you are trying to force me to do," gasped Jefferson, almost speechless between rage and physical fear; for Hamilton's eyes were flashing, his body curved as if he meditated immediate personal violence. "But I'll not do it, sir, any more than I or anyone else will be deluded by the speciousness of your language. You are an upstart. You have no State affinities, you despise them for a very good reason--you come from God knows where--I do not even know the name of the place. You are playing a game. You care nothing for the country you were not born in. Unless you can be king, you would treat it as your toy."

"For your absurd personalities I care nothing," said Hamilton, reseating himself. "They are but the ebullitions of an impotence that would ruin and cannot. But take heed what you write, for in injuring the Secretary of the Treasury you injure the prosperity of the country; and if you push me too far, I'll expose you and make you infamous. Here comes the President. For God's sake bottle your spite for the present."

The two men did not exchange a remark during the rest of the sitting, but Jefferson boiled slowly and steadily; Hamilton's words had raised welts under which he would writhe for some time to come. When the Cabinet adjourned he remained, and followed Washington into the library, under cover of a chat about seeds and bulbs, a topic of absorbing interest to both. When their legs were extended before the fire, Jefferson said, as abruptly as if the idea had but just presented itself:--

"Mr. President, we are both Virginians, and had cut our wisdom teeth--not that for a moment I class myself with you, sir--while young Hamilton was still in diapers."

"Children do not wear diapers in the West Indies," interrupted Washington, in his gravest accents. "I spent some months on the Island of Barbadoes, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty-one."

"Was he born In the West Indies? I had never heard. But, if I may continue, I have therefore summoned up my courage to speak to you on a subject close to my heart--for no subject can be so close as the welfare of a country to which we have devoted our lives."

He paused a moment, prepared with an answer, did the President haughtily warn him not to transgress the bounds of etiquette; but Washington was staring at the fire, apparently recalling the scenery of the Tropics.

Jefferson continued: "In the length and breadth of this Union there is not a man, not even the most ardent Republican, who has not implicit faith in the flawless quality of your patriotism and in your personal wisdom; but, and possibly unknown to you, sir, the extreme and high-handed measures, coupled with the haughty personal arrogance, of our Secretary of the Treasury have inspired a widespread belief, which is permeating even his personal friends, that he entertains subtle and insidious monarchical designs, is plotting to convert our little Republic into a kingdom. Personally, I do not believe this--"

"I should hope not. You have always seemed to me to be a man of singular wisdom and good sense. Therefore I feel sure that you are as heartily sick of all this absurd talk about monarchism as I am. There is not a word of truth in Mr. Hamilton's 'monarchical designs'; it is impossible that you should not know this as well as I do. You must also be as well aware that he has rendered services to this country which will be felt as long as it remains united. It is doubtful if anyone else could have rendered these same services, for, to my knowledge at least, we have no man in the country who combines financial genius with an unexampled boldness and audacity. He has emphatically been the man for the hour, abruptly transferred from his remote birthplace, it has seemed to me, by a special intervention of Providence; free of all local prejudices, which have been, and will continue to be, the curse of this country, and with a mettle unacted upon by years of doubt and hesitation. I do no other man in public life an injustice in my warm admiration of Mr. Hamilton's genius and absolute disinterestedness. Each has his place, and is doing his part bravely and according to his lights, many of them rendering historic services which Mr. Hamilton's will not overshadow. His are equally indisputable. This unfortunate result of establishing a National Bank was doubtless inevitable, and will quickly disappear. That the Bank is a monarchical device, you, of all men, are too wise to believe for a moment. Leave that for such sensational scoundrels as the editors of this new _Gazette_ and of other papers. I regret that there is a personal antipathy between you and Mr. Hamilton, but I have not the least doubt that you believe in his integrity as firmly as I do."

Jefferson was scowling heavily. "I am not so sure that I do, sir," he said; inconsistent often in his calmest tempers, passion dissipated his power of consecutive thought. "When Mr. Hamilton and I were on friendly terms--before he took to annoying me with a daily exhibition of personal rancour, from which I have been entirely free--he has often at my own table avowed his admiration of the British Constitution, deprecated the weakness of our own admirable instrument, tacitly admitted his regret that we are a republic and not a kingdom. I have his very words in my diary. He is committed out of his own mouth. I not only believe but know him to be a lover of absolute monarchy, and that he has no faith that this country can continue to exist in its present shape. It is for that reason I hold him to be a traitor to the country with which he is merely amusing himself."

"Sir," said Washington, turning to Jefferson an immobile face, in which the eyes were beginning to glitter, "is a man to be judged by his private fancies or by his public acts? I know nothing of Mr. Hamilton's secret desires. Neither, I fancy, do you. We do know that he has resigned a brilliant and profitable practice at the bar to guide this unfortunate country out of bankruptcy and dishonour into prosperity and every promise of a great and honourable future. Pray let the matter rest there for the present. If Mr. Hamilton be really a liar and a charlatan, rest assured he will betray himself before any great harm is done. Every man is his own worst enemy. I was deeply interested in what you were saying when we entered this room. Where did you say you purchased those lily bulbs? My garden is sadly behind yours, I fear. I certainly shall enter upon an amiable rivalry with you next summer."

And Jefferson knew better than to persist.

XXVIII

On January 28th Hamilton sent to Congress his Report on Manufactures, and how anybody survived the fray which ensued can only be explained by the cast-iron muscles forged in the ancestral arena. Hamilton had no abstract or personal theories regarding tariff, and would have been the first to denounce the criminal selfishness which distinguishes Protection to-day. The situation was peculiar, and required the application of strictly business methods to a threatening and immediate emergency. Great Britain was oppressing the country commercially by every method her council could devise. Defensive legislation was imperative. Moreover, if the country was to compete with the nations of the world and grow in independent wealth, particularly if it would provide internal resources against another war, it must manufacture extensively, and its manufactures must be protected. Such, in brief, was the argument of one of the ablest State papers in any country, for whose exhaustive details, the result of two years of study and comparison, of research into the commercial conditions of every State in Europe, there is no space here. The battle was purely political, for the measure was popular with the country from the first. It was opposed by the planters, with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe in the lead. They argued that the measure would burden the people at large; that the country was too remunerative not to be able to take care of itself; that progress should be natural and not artificial; that the measure was unconstitutional; above all, as the reader need hardly be told, that no proposition had yet been advanced by the monarchical Secretary of the Treasury so "paternal," so conclusive of his ultimate designs. "To let the thirteen States, bound together in a great indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great system, superior to the control of transatlantic force and influence, and able to dictate the connection between the old and the new world," was but another subtle device to consolidate the States for sudden and utter subversion when Hamilton had screwed the last point into his crown. That in the Twentieth Century the United States would be an object of uneasiness daily approaching to terror in the eyes of Great Britain and Europe, as a result of this Report, even Hamilton himself did not foresee, much less the planters; nor that it would carry through the War of 1812 without financial distress. Above all, did no one anticipate that the three Virginians, in their successive incumbencies of the Executive Chair, would pursue the policy of protection in unhesitating obedience to the voice of the people. The first result of this Report was the great manufacturing interests of Paterson, New Jersey, which celebrated their centennial a few years ago. Paterson was Hamilton's personal selection, and it still throbs with something of his own energy.

Meanwhile he was being elected an honorary member of colleges and societies of arts and letters, and persecuted by portrait painters and sculptors. Every honour, public and private, was thrust upon him, and each new victory was attended by a public banquet and a burst of popular applause. He was apparently invulnerable, confounding his opponents and enemies without effort. Never had there been such a conquering hero; even the Virginian trio began to wonder uneasily if he were but mortal, if he were not under some mighty and invisible protection. As for the Federalists, they waxed in enthusiasm and devotion. His career was at its zenith. No man in the United States was--nor has been since--so loved and so hated, both in public and in private life. Even Washington's career had not been more triumphant, and hardly so remarkable; for he was an American born, had always had a larger measure of popular approval, and never had discovered the faculty of raising such bitter and powerful enemies. Nor had he won an extraordinary reputation until he was long past Hamilton's present age. Certainly he had never exhibited such unhuman precocity.

But although Hamilton had, by this time, extancy to suffice any man, and was hunted to his very lair by society, he had no thought of resting on his labours. He by no means regarded himself as a demi-god, nor the country as able to take care of itself. He prepared, and sent to Congress in rapid succession, his Reports on Estimates for Receipts and Expenditures for 1791-92, on Loans, on Duties, on Spirits, on Additional Supplies for 1792, on Remission of Duties, and on the Public Debt.

Nor did his labours for the year confine itself to reports. On August 4th, his patience with the scurrilities of Freneau's _Gazette_ came to an end, and he published in Fenno's journal the first of a series of papers that Jefferson, in the hush of Monticello, read with the sensations of those forefathers who sat on a pan of live coals for the amusement of Indian warriors. Hamilton was thorough or nothing. He had held himself in as long as could be expected of any mortal less perfected in his self-government than George Washington: but when, finally, he was not only stung to fury by the constant and systematic calumnies of Jefferson's slanting art, but fearful for the permanence of his measures, in the gradual unsettling of the public mind, he took off his coat; and Jefferson knew that the first engagement of the final battle had begun in earnest, that the finish would be the retirement of one or other from the Cabinet.

Hamilton began by mathematically demonstrating that Freneau was the tool of Jefferson, imported and suborned for the purpose of depressing the national authority, and exposed the absurdity of the denials of both. When he had finished dealing with this proposition, its day for being a subject of animated debate was over. He then laid before the public certain facts in the career of Jefferson with which they were unacquainted: that he had first discountenanced the adoption of the Constitution, and then advised the ratification of nine of the States and the refusal of four until amendments were secured,--a proceeding which infallibly would have led to civil war; that he had advocated the transfer of the debt due to France to a company of Hollanders in these words: "If there is a _danger_ of the public debt _not being punctual_, I submit whether it may not be better, that _the discontents which would then arise_ should be _transferred_ from a _court_ of whose _good-will we have so much need_ to the _breasts_ of a _private company_"--an obviously dishonourable suggestion, particularly as the company in view was a set of speculators. It was natural enough, however, in a man whose kink for repudiation in general led him to promulgate the theory that one generation cannot bind another for the payment of a debt. Hamilton, having disposed of Jefferson's attempts, under the signature of Aristides, to wriggle out of both these accusations, discoursed upon the disloyal fact that the Secretary of State was the declared opponent of every important measure which had been devised by the Government, and proceeded to lash him for his hypocrisy in sitting daily at the right hand of the President while privately slandering him; of exercising all the arts of an intriguing mind, ripened by a long course of European diplomacy, to undermine an Administration whose solidity was the only guaranty for the continued prosperity and honour of the country. Hamilton reminded the people, with a pen too pointed to fail of conviction, of the increase of wealth and happiness which had ensued every measure opposed by the Secretary of State, and drew a warning picture of what must result were these measures reversed by a party without any convictions beyond the determination to compass the downfall of the party in power. He bade them choose, and passed on to a refutation of the several accusations hurled at the Administration, and at himself in particular.

He wrote sometimes with temperance and self-restraint, at others with stinging contempt and scorn. Jefferson replied with elaborate denials, solemn protests of disinterested virtue, and counter accusations. Hamilton was back at him before the print was dry, and the battle raged with such unseemly violence, that Washington wrote an indignant letter to each, demanding that they put aside their personal rancours and act together for the common good of the country. The replies of the two men were characteristic. Hamilton wrote a frank and manly letter, barely alluding to Jefferson, and asserting that honour and policy exacted his charges and refutations. He would make no promise to discontinue his papers, for he had no intention of laying down his pen until Jefferson was routed from the controversial field, and the public satisfied of the truth. Jefferson's letter was pious and sad. It breathed a fervent disinterestedness, and provided as many poisoned arrows for his rival as its ample space permitted. It was a guinea beaten out into an acre of gold leaf and steeped in corrosive sublimate.

But during that summer of 1792 Hamilton had little time for personal explosions except in brief. The Presidential elections approached, and the greater part of his time was given to party management and counsel. Washington's renomination and election were assured. The only obstacle encountered had been Washington himself, but his yearning for peace had again retired before duty. The parties were arrayed in a desperate struggle for the Vice-Presidency, the issue to determine the vindication or the condemnation of the measures of Hamilton. Adams himself was unpopular in the anti-Federalist ranks, on account of his aristocratic tastes and his opposition to the French Revolution; but the time was propitious for a tremendous trial of strength with the omnipotent Secretary of the Treasury, and any candidate of his would have been opposed as bitterly.

Jefferson and Burr were each suggested for the office, but Hamilton brought down his heavy hand on both of them promptly, and the fight settled into a bitter struggle between Adams and Clinton. The latter's strength in the State of New York was still very great, and he was as hardy a fighter as ever. But his political past was studded with vulnerable points, and the Federalists spared him not.

It is impossible, whatever one's predilections, not to admire Clinton for his superb fighting qualities. He was indomitable, and in ability and resourcefulness second only to Hamilton himself, in party management far superior; for he had greater patience, a tenderer and more intimate concern for his meaner followers, and less trust in his own unaided efforts and the right of his cause. Hamilton by no means was blind to the pettier side of human nature, but he despised it; instead of truckling and manipulating, he would scatter it before him or grind it to pulp. There is no possible doubt that if Hamilton had happened into a country at war with itself, but with strong monarchical proclivities, he would have seized the crown and made one of the wisest and kindest of autocrats. His lines cast in a land alight from end to end with republican fires, he accepted the situation with his inherent philosophy, burned with a patriotism as steady as Washington's own, but ruled it in his own way, forced upon it measures in whose wisdom he implicitly believed, and which, in every instance, time has vindicated. But his instinct was that of the amiable despot, and he had no conciliation in him.