On that September morning they breakfasted together, and talked for hours, beginning a friendship which was to be of the deepest consequences to the country they both were striving to deliver.

During the following month Hamilton had much leisure, and he spent it in the library of the Morris house, which its owner, a royalist, had abandoned on the approach of the American troops, fleeing too hurriedly to take his books.  The house was now General Washington’s headquarters, and he invited Hamilton to make what use of the library he pleased.  It was a cool room, and he found there many of the books he had noted down for future study.  He also wrote out a synopsis of a political and commercial history of Great Britain.  As the proclivities and furnishing of a mind like Hamilton’s cannot fail to interest the students of mankind, a digression may be pardoned in favour of this list of books he made for future study, and of the notes scattered throughout his pay book:—­

Smith’s History of New York; Leonidas; View of the Universe; Millot’s History of France; Memoirs of the House of Brandenburgh; Review of the Characters of the Principal Nations of Europe; Review of Europe; History of Prussia; History of France; Lassel’s Voyage through Italy; Robertson’s Charles V; Present State of Europe; Grecian History; Baretti’s Travels; Bacon’s Essays; Philosophical Transactions; Entick’s History of the Late War; European Settlements in America; Winn’s History of America.

The Dutch in Greenland have from 150 to 200 sail and ten thousand seamen....  It is ordered that in their public prayers they pray that it should please God to bless the Government, the Lords, the States, and their great and small fisheries.

     Hamburg and Germany have a balance against England—­they furnish
     her with large quantities of linen.

     Trade with France greatly against England....  The trade with
     Flanders in favour of England....  A large balance in favour of
     Norway and Denmark.

     Rates of Exchange with the several Nations in 52, viz.:  To Venice,
     Genoa, Leghorn, Amsterdam, Hamburgh.  To Paris—­Loss, Gain.

Postlethwaite supposes the quantity of cash necessary to carry on the circulation in a state one third of the rents to the land proprietors, or one ninth of the whole product of the lands.  See the articles, Cash and Circulation.

The par between land and labour is twice the quantity of land whose product will maintain the labourer.  In France one acre and a half will maintain one.  In England three, owing to the difference in the manner of living.

     Aristotle’s Politics, chap. 6, definition of money, &c.

     The proportion of gold and silver, as settled by Sir Isaac Newton’s
     proposition, was 1 to 14.  It was generally through Europe 1 to 15. 
     In China I believe it is 1 to 10.