I am sorry that the same spirit of indifference to public affairs prevails, [he wrote to Sears].  It is necessary we should rouse and begin to do our business in earnest, or we shall play a losing game.  We must have a government with more power.  We must have a tax in kind.  We must have a foreign loan.  We must have a bank on the true principles of a bank.  We must have an administration distinct from Congress, and in the hands of single men under their orders.  We must, above all things, have an army for the war....  We are told here there is to be a Congress of the neutral powers at the Hague for meditating of peace.  God send it may be true.  We want it; but if the idea goes abroad, ten to one if we do not fancy the thing done, and fall into a profound sleep till the cannon of the enemy waken us next campaign.  This is our national character.

Hamilton, the High Priest of Energy, had long since declared war against the genius of the American people, who believed in God and the art of leisure.  Hamilton believed in God and a cabinet of zealous ministers.  He was already a thorn in the side of estimable but hesitant patriots, and in times to come his unremitting and remorseless energy was to be a subject of reproach by associates and enemies alike.  Even Jefferson, that idol of the present as of the past democracy, had timidly declared against separation in 1774, while Hamilton, a boy of seventeen, had been the first to suggest the resort to arms, and incessant in his endeavours until the great result was accomplished.  He had countless other schemes, and he knew that eventually he would succeed in driving the American people before the point of his quill.  That his task would be long and arduous did not daunt him for a moment.  By this time he knew every want of the country, and was determined upon the reorganization of the government.  The energy which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the American nation to-day was generated by Hamilton, might, indeed, be said to be the persistence and diffusion of his ego.  For the matter of that, all that is greatest in this American evolution of a century was typified in Hamilton.  Not only his formidable energy, but his unqualified honour and integrity, his unquenchable optimism, his extraordinary nimbleness of mind and readiness of resource, his gay good-nature, high spirits, and buoyancy, his light philosophy effervescing above unsounded depths, his inability to see when he was beaten, his remorseless industry, his hard common sense, combined with a versatile cleverness which makes for shallowness in another race, his careless generosity, his aptitude for detail and impatience of it, his reckless bravery in war and intrepidity in peace, even his highly strung nerves, excitability, and obliging readiness at all times for a fight, raise him high above history as the genius of the American race.  The reverse side of the national character we owe to the greatest of his rivals; as will be seen hereafter.