a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

I. They are not among the powers specially enumerated: for these are: 1st A power to lay taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States [Art. I, Sect. VIII]; but no debt is paid by this bill, nor any tax laid. Were it a bill to raise money, its origination in the Senate would condemn it by the Constitution [Art. I, Sect. VII].

९९

2d. "To borrow money." But this bill neither borrows money nor ensures the borrowing of it. The proprietors of the bank will be just as free as any other money holders, to lend or not to lend their money to the public. The operation proposed in the bill, first to lend them two millions, and then to borrow them back again, cannot change the nature of the latter act, which will still be a payment, and not a loan, call it by what name you please. 3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the States, and with the Indian tribes." To erect a bank, and to regulate commerce, are very different acts. He who erects a bank, creates a subject of commerce in its bills; so does he who makes a bushel of wheat, or digs a dollar out of the mines; yet neither of these persons regulates commerce thereby. To make a thing which may be bought and sold, is not to prescribe regulations for buying and selling. Accordingly, the bill does not propose the measure as a regulation of trade, but as "productive of considerable advantages to trade." Still less are these powers covered by any other of the special enumerations.

II. Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which are the two following:1

1. To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States. That is to say, to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare." . . . They are not to lay

1 The second of the "general phrases" is "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the enumerated powers. Jefferson argues on this point that the convenience the bank might be in the collection of taxes is not proof of either its necessity or its propriety.

taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumeration of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.

It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect. . . .

Hamilton carried Congress with him on the bank, funding, and tariff bills, in spite of the able opposition led by Jefferson. In the spring of 1792 he unbosomed himself to his friend Colonel Edward Carrington in a long letter, intended perhaps primarily to exhibit Jefferson to the people of his own state in his true light, and to explain to the Virginia Federalists why he had broken with Madison and attacked Jefferson.

My dear Sir:

Philadelphia, May 26, 1792

Believing that I possess a share of your personal friendship and confidence, and yielding to that which I feel toward you; persuaded also, that our political creed is the same on two essential points first the necessity of Union to the respectability and happiness 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.

It was not till the last session that I became unequivocally convinced of the following truth: "that Mr. Madison, cooperating with Mr. Jefferson, is at the head of a faction 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."

Mr. Jefferson, with very little reserve, manifests his dislike of the funding system generally . . . I do not mean that he advocates 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 conversations, with foreigners as well as citizens, he has thrown censure on my principles of government and on my measures of administration. He has predicted that the people would not long tolerate my proceedings. . . . Some of those whom he immediately and notoriously moves have even whispered suspicions of the rectitude of my motives and conduct.... 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 him. . . .

I find strong confirmation in the following circumstances : Freneau, the present printer of the National Gazette . . . 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 the numbers down to the present day, and I never was more mistaken if he does not pronounce that it is a paper devoted to the subversion of me and the measures in which I have 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.1

In almost all the questions, great and small, which have arisen since the first session of Congress, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison have been found among those who are disposed to narrow the federal authority. . . . In respect to foreign politics, the views of these gentlemen are, in my judgment, equally [un]sound and dangerous. They have a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment against Great Britain. They would draw us into the closest embrace of the former, and involve us in all the consequences of her politics.2... This disposition goes to a length, particularly in Mr. Jefferson, of which, till lately, I had no idea. . . . If these gentlemen were left to pursue their own course, there would be, in less than six months, an open war between the United States and Great Britain. . . .

Mr. Jefferson, it is known, did not in the first instance cordially acquiesce in the new Constitution for the United States; he had many doubts and reserves. He left this country [1784] before we had experienced the imbecillities of the former [Constitution, i. e. the Articles of Confederation]. . . .

In France, he saw government only on the side of its abuses. He drank freely of the French philosophy, in religion, in science, in politics. He came from France in the moment of a fermentation which he had a share in exciting. . . . He came electrified with attachment to France, and with the project of knitting together the two countries in the closest political bands. . . .

Another circumstance has contributed to widening the breach [in American politics]. 'Tis evident beyond a question . . . that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the Presidential chair. This too is an important object of the party-politics. . . .

1 Specimens of the satirical and serious criticism of Washington's administration which appeared in the National Gazette are given by A. B. Hart in his American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. III, pp. 293 and 305.

2 Hamilton wrote this letter about a month after France, by declaring war against Austria and Prussia, opened the quarter century of strife which convulsed Europe from Russia to Portugal.

A word on another point. I am told that serious apprehensions are disseminated in your State as to the existence of a monarchical party meditating the destruction of State and republican government. If it is possible that so absurd an idea can gain ground, it is necessary that it should be combatted....1 A very small number of men indeed may entertain theories less republican than Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison, but I am persuaded that there is not a man among them who would not regard as both criminal and visionary any attempt to subvert the republican system of the country. . . . As to the destruction of State governments, the great and real anxiety is to be able to preserve the national from the too potent and counteracting influence of those governments. As to my own political creed, I give it to you with the utmost sincerity. I am affectionately attached to the republican theory. I desire above all things to see the equality of political rights, exclusive of all hereditary distinction. . . .

THE REIGN OF FEDERALISM

[165]

When the news of war between the French Republic 48. The neuand Great Britain reached America, President Washing- lamation, trality procton, in view of our close relations with France in the April 22, 1793 Revolutionary War and of the treaty of 1778, which bound us to an alliance with that nation (see No. 37, p. 143), submitted the following list of questions to each member of his cabinet, "preparatory," he writes, "to a meeting at my house tomorrow, where I shall expect to see you at 9 o'clock, and to receive the result of your reflections thereon."

1 Three days before Hamilton wrote this, Jefferson sent a letter to Washington, in which the following sentence occurs: "This has been brought about by the Monarchical federalists themselves, who having been for the new government merely as a stepping stone to monarchy,” Jefferson, Writings, ed. P. L. Ford, Vol. VI, p. 5.