practice, but he was the most careless and generous of men, always refusing the fees of people poorer than himself, and with no talent for personal, great as was his mastery of political, economy.  If General Schuyler often came to the rescue his son-in-law never knew it.  Hamilton had a vague idea that Betsey could manage somehow, and was far too absorbed to give the matter a thought.  Betsey, it would seem, had her own little reputation, for it was about this time that M’Henry finished a letter to Hamilton, as follows:—­

Pray present me to Mrs. Hamilton.  I have learned from a friend of yours that she has, as far as the comparison will hold, as much merit as your treasurer as you have as treasurer of the wealth of the United States.

XVI

Congress reassembled, and on the 2d of January Hamilton sent in his Report on Public Credit.  By this time excitement and anxiety, to say nothing of cupidity, were risen to fever pitch.  All realized that they were well in the midst of a national crisis, for the country was bankrupt, and her foreign and domestic debts footed up to quite eighty millions of dollars—­a stupendous sum in the infancy of a nation, when there was little specie in the country, and an incalculable amount of worthless paper, with long arrears of interest besides.  If Hamilton could cope with this great question, and if Congress, with its determined anti-government party, would support him, the Union and its long-suffering patriots would enter upon a season of prosperity and happiness.  If the one were inadequate to meet the situation, or the other failed in its national duty, the consequences must be deeper wretchedness and disaster than anything they yet had endured.  The confidence in Hamilton was very widespread, for not only were his great abilities fully recognized, but his general opinions on the subject had long been known, and approved by all but the politicians on the wrong side.  The confidence had been manifested in a manner little to his liking:  speculators had scoured the country, buying up government securities at the rate of a few shillings on the pound, taking advantage of needy holders, who dwelt, many of them, in districts too remote from the centre of action to know what the Government was about.  And even before this “signal instance of moral turpitude,” the fact that so many old soldiers who had gone home with no other pay than government securities, to be exchanged for specie at the pleasure of a government which nobody had trusted, had sold out for a small sum, was one of the agitating themes of the country; and opinion was divided upon the right of the assignees to collect the full amount which the new government might be prepared to pay, while the moral rights of the worthy and original holder were ignored.  It was understood, however, that Hamilton had given no more searching thought to any subject than to this.