and training had planted in him a strong sympathy for State rights.  In Washington’s own Cabinet dwelt side by side the leaders of the two parties:  Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, though born in Virginia of high aristocratic stock, was the most aggressive and infatuated of Democrats.  Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies and owing nothing to family connections, was a natural aristocrat.  He believed that the educated and competent few must inevitably govern the incompetent masses.  His enemies suspected that he leaned strongly towards monarchy and would have been glad to see Washington crowned king.

President Washington, believing in Assumption, took satisfaction in Hamilton’s bargain with Jefferson which made Assumption possible.  For the President saw in the act a power making for union, and union was one of the chief objects of his concern.  The foremost of Hamilton’s measures, however, for good or for ill, was the protective tariff on foreign imports.  Experience has shown that protection has been much more than a financial device.  It has been deeply and inextricably moral.  It has caused many American citizens to seek for tariff favors from the Government.  Compared with later rates, those which Hamilton’s tariff set were moderate indeed.  The highest duties it exacted on foreign imports were fifteen per cent, while the average was only eight and a half per cent.  And yet it had not been long in force when the Government was receiving $200,000 a month, which enabled it to defray all the necessary public charges.  Hamilton, in the words of Daniel Webster, “smote the rock of National resources and copious streams of wealth poured forth.  He touched the dead corpse of public credit and it stood forth erect with life.”  The United States of all modern countries have been the best fitted by their natural resources to do without artificial stimulation, in spite of which fact they still cling, after one hundred and thirty-five years, to the easy and plausible tariff makeshift.  Washington himself believed that the tariff should so promote industries as to provide for whatever the country needed in time of war.

Two other financial measures are to be credited to Hamilton.  The first was the excise, an internal revenue on distilled spirits.  It met with opposition from the advocates of State rights, but was passed after heated debate.  The last was the establishment of a United States Bank.  All of Hamilton’s measures tended directly to centralization, the object which he and Washington regarded as paramount.

In 1790 Washington made a second trip through the Eastern States, taking pains to visit Rhode Island, which was the last State to ratify the Constitution (May 29, 1790).  These trips of his, for which the hostile might have found parallels in the royal progresses of the British sovereigns, really served a good purpose; for they enabled the people to see and hear their President; which had a good effect in