It is impossible here, even were it necessary, to follow Washington’s action in regard to all the details which went to make up and to sustain Hamilton’s policy, to which, as a whole, Washington gave his hearty approval and support.  The revenue system, the public lands, the arrangement of loans, the mint, all alike met with his active concurrence.  He was too great a man not to value rightly Hamilton’s work, and the way in which that work brought order, credit, honor, and prosperity out of a chaos of debt and bankruptcy appealed peculiarly to his own love for method, organization, and sound business principles.  He met every criticism on Hamilton’s policy without concession, and defended it when it was attacked.  To Hamilton’s genius that policy must be credited, but it gained its success and strength largely from the firm support of Washington.

There are two matters, however, connected with the Treasury Department, which cannot be passed over in this general way.  One was a policy reasoned out and published by Hamilton, but never during his lifetime put into the form of law in the broad and systematic manner which he desired.  The other was a consequence of his financial policy as adopted, but which reached far beyond the bounds of financial arrangements.  The first was the policy set forth in Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures.  The second was the enforcement of the excise and its results.

The defense of our commerce against foreign discriminations was a proximate cause of the movement which resulted in the Constitution of the United States, and closely allied to it was the anxious wish to develop our internal resources and our domestic industry.  This idea was not at all new.  Sporadic attempts to start and carry on various industries had been made during the colonial period.  They had all failed, either because the watchful mother-country took pains to stifle them, or because lack of capital and experience, in addition to foreign competition, killed them almost at their birth.  The idea of developing American industries was generally diffused for the first time when the colonists strove to bring England to terms by non-intercourse acts.  The Americans then thought that they could carry their points by making war upon the British pocket, and excluding English merchants from their markets.  The next step, of course, was to supply their own markets themselves; and the non-intercourse agreements, which were economically prohibitory tariff acts, gave a fitful impulse to various simple industries.  In the clash of arms this idea naturally dropped out of the popular mind, but it began to revive soon after the return of peace.  The government of the confederation was too feeble to adopt any policy in this or any other matter, but in the first Congress the desire to develop American industries found expression.  The first tariff was laid primarily to raise the revenue so sorely needed at that moment.  But the effort to do this