CHAPTER avoided.

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Men would venture according to their opinion of the final result. When the proposal to discriminate 1793. between original holders and purchasers was brought forward, the price fell. When that proposition was rejected, the price rose again. It was probably the same with the state debts in the various stages of the assumption. But surely no suspicion of improper conduct could fall on those who had voted uniformly either for or against the measure. The just objects of suspicion were the members who at first had opposed the assumption, but had voted for it as finally modified. Those members were five in number, and easily known. Three still retained their seats in the House; the other two were from the same state with the mover of the present amendment. Of the three still in the House, White was himself one, and no man, he was confident, would apply the charge of speculation to him, or, indeed, to either of the three, in the belief that there was a shadow of truth in it. Several other members took the same occasion to challenge the application of any charge to them. But not the least disposition was evinced by any member of the opposition to bring the matter to any practical test.

In the case, however, of the Secretary of the Treasury, more sanguine hopes seem to have been entertained. The man whom the opposition had so often accused of corruption, they took it for granted must be corrupt. With the view to obtain a basis for their charges, immediately after the vote on the bill for paying the debt to the bank, Giles had submitted a resolution calling upon the president for particular information as to the several sums of money borrowed by his authority; the terms of the loans; the application of the money; and other particulars. That call having been answered, another was Jau 23 now made, requesting additional and more particular in

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formation; extending also to the balances of the public CHAPTER money on deposit with the bank and its branches; the accounts of the sinking fund; and the condition of the 1793. finances generally. In proposing this call, and as a reason for it, Giles delivered an elaborate speech, based upon the returns already made, and other treasury statements of the session, in which he broadly charged the secretary with failing to account for upward of a million and a half of the public money; intimating, also, foul play and mismanagement in the negotiation of the loans, and in drawing a part of the money unnecessarily into the United States; and that half a million of dollars had been unnecessarily borrowed of the United States Bank at the very time that a larger amount was lying idle on deposit in that institution. Thus, at last, were made to assume a tangible and positive form the various charges against Hamilton of corruption and peculation, in which the opposition, in private and in public, had so freely indulged.

As considerable time must necessarily elapse before replies could be prepared to all the minutiae of these inquiries, Hamilton hastened to meet the most material Fet 4 part of the charges thus rashly and recklessly hazarded against his official integrity. "The resolutions to which I am to answer," so his report ran, "were not moved without a pretty copious display of the reasons on which they were founded. Those reasons are before the public through the channel of the press. They are of a nature to excite attention, to beget alarm, to inspire doubts. Deductions of a very extraordinary complexion may, without forcing the sense, be drawn from them. I feel it incumbent to meet the suggestions thus thrown out with decision and explicitness. And while I hope I shall let fall nothing inconsistent with that cordial and

CHAPTER unqualified respect which I feel for the House of Repre V. sentatives while I acquiesce in the sufficiency of the 1793. motives that induced, on their part, the giving a prompt and free course to the investigation proposed, I can not but resolve to treat the subject with a freedom which is due to truth and to the consciousness of a pure zeal for the public interest."

The report then proceeded to show that the alleged defalcations were made up by carelessly or maliciously reckoning as so much money which ought to be in the treasury, a considerable amount of bonds given for duties, but not yet due; also a large amount of the proceeds of bills on the bankers abroad, sold but not yet paid for; and, what was still more remarkable, by omitting to take into account as money in the treasury another large sum actually reported as being on deposit in the Bank of the United States. After pointing out these errors, and giving an explanation also of certain alleged but imaginary discrepancies between some of his statements and certain memoranda in the treasurer's books, the report concluded with this significant question: "Is it not truly matter of regret that so formai an explanation on such a point should have been made requisite? Could no personal inquiry of either of the officers concerned have superseded the necessity of publicly calling the attention of the House of Representatives to an appearance, in truth, so little significant? Was it seriously supposed that there could be any difficulty in explaining that appearance, when the very disclosure of it proceeded from the voluntary act of the head of this department?"

This complete and unanswerable vindication against the main point of the charges might have abashed an accuser loss brazen-faced than Giles, chiefly distin

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guished, through a long subsequent pelitical career, for CHAPTER pertinacious virulence and total want of candor. But Giles did not stand alone in this business. He had been 1793. judiciously selected as spokesman; but the attack upon Hamilton was evidently a concerted matter among the leaders of the opposition. The main assault had disgracefully failed; but it was still hoped to pick, at least, some flaws in the secretary's management of financial affairs; and in the minute history of the transactions of that department, drawn out by repeated inquiries, to find something on which to rest, at least, the charges of want of caution, or want of judgment, or of acts done without sufficient authority.

By acts of the 4th and 12th of August, 1790, as has been mentioned in a previous chapter, the president had been authorized to negotiate two loans, one of twelve millions of dollars, for the discharge of the foreign, especially of the French, debt due and to become due; the other, of two millions, for the purposes of the sinking fund. The general execution of the powers thus given to the president he had committed, under certain restrictions, by a written authority, to the Secretary of the Treasury. Prior to the passage of these acts, the American bankers in Holland, perceiving that money would be needed to meet the foreign demands against the United States, had availed themselves of a favorable opportunity to open on their own responsibility a new loan for three millions of florins, trusting to the government to ratify and confirm their proceedings. This loan it had been thought best to adopt as a part of those authorized by Congress, and Hamilton had written to the bankers to make a partition of it between the two loans, that for the foreign debt, and that for the sinking fund, which he proposed at first to keep separate and distinct. But to

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CHAPTER this partition of the loan already made the bankers ob jected, as likely to raise suspicions among the subscrib1793. ers, to whom it might not be so easy to explain the proceeding, and Hamilton, on reflection, saw no objection to a general borrowing, on the joint authority of the two acts, to the extent of fourteen millions of dollars, without any special partition of the money thus borrowed between the two loans. In fact, the opening at the same time of two distinct and separate loans might give occasion to many inconveniences. In accordance with this idea, the sum of 19,550,000 florins, about $7,820,000, had been borrowed in Holland in six separate installments, at rates of interest, charges included, beginning at a fraction. above five and a half per cent., and ending at a fraction below four and a half per cent. Of this amount upward of four millions of dollars had been appropriated to pay the installments of the French debt already due. The Spanish debt had also been provided for out of it; the debt due to the foreign officers who had served in the Continental armies; and the interest and installments of the Dutch loans. Besides these payments made abroad, an amount equal to $2,304,769 had been drawn into the treasury by the sale of bills of exchange on the foreign bankers, in whose hands there still remained, after deducting the charges on the loans, a small balance. All these loans or installments of loans, except the first, had been made by Short as sole commissioner. The payments to France had been under the superintendence of Morris; but in both cases the actual handling of the money had rested exclusively with the bankers of the United States at Amsterdam and Paris. Of the moneys drawn into the United States, near half a million had been expended in advances for St. Domingo on account of the French debt. The early purchases