citizens, apparently with welcome.  The courtesies of dinner-parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed me at once in their familiar society.  But I cannot describe the wonder and mortification with which the table conversations filled me.  Politics were the chief topic, and a preference of kingly over republican government, was evidently the favorite sentiment.  An apostate I could not be, nor yet a hypocrite; and I found myself, for the most part, the only advocate on the republican side of the question, unless among the guests there chanced to be some member of that party from the legislative Houses.  Hamilton’s financial system had then passed.  It had two objects; 1. as a puzzle, to exclude popular understanding and inquiry; 2. as a machine for the corruption of the legislature:  for he avowed the opinion, that man could be governed by one of two motives only, force or interest:  force, he observed, in this country, was out of the question, and the interests, therefore, of the members must be laid hold of, to keep the legislature in unison with the executive.  And with grief and shame it must be acknowledged that his machine was not without effect; that even in this, the birth of our government, some members were found sordid enough to bend their duty, to their interests, and to look after personal rather than public good.

It is well known that during the war, the greatest difficulty we encountered, was the want of money or means to pay our soldiers who fought, or our farmers, manufacturers, and merchants, who furnished the necessary supplies of food and clothing for them.  After the expedient of paper money had exhausted itself, certificates of debt were given to the individual creditors, with assurance of payment, so soon as the United States should be able.  But the distresses of these people often obliged them to part with these for the half, the fifth, and even a tenth of their value; and speculators had made a trade of cozening them from the holders, by the most fraudulent practices, and persuasions that they would never be paid.  In the bill for funding and paying these, Hamilton made no difference between the original holders, and the fraudulent purchasers of this paper.  Great and just repugnance arose at putting these two classes of creditors on the same footing, and great exertions were used to pay the former the full value, and to the latter, the price only which they had paid, with interest.  But this would have prevented the game which was to be played, and for which the minds of greedy members were already tutored and prepared.  When the trial of strength, on these several efforts, had indicated the form in which the bill would finally pass, this being known within doors sooner than without, and especially, than to those who were in distant parts of the Union, the base scramble began.  Couriers and relay-horses by land, and swift-sailing pilot-boats by sea, were flying in all directions.  Active partners and agents were associated and employed