trial by jury for all persons charged by federal officers with serious crimes.  To reassure those who still feared that local rights might be invaded by the federal government, the tenth amendment expressly provided that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.  Seven years later, the eleventh amendment was written in the same spirit as the first ten, after a heated debate over the action of the Supreme Court in permitting a citizen to bring a suit against “the sovereign state” of Georgia.  The new amendment was designed to protect states against the federal judiciary by forbidding it to hear any case in which a state was sued by a citizen.

=Funding the National Debt.=—­Paper declarations of rights, however, paid no bills.  To this task Hamilton turned all his splendid genius.  At the very outset he addressed himself to the problem of the huge public debt, daily mounting as the unpaid interest accumulated.  In a Report on Public Credit under date of January 9, 1790, one of the first and greatest of American state papers, he laid before Congress the outlines of his plan.  He proposed that the federal government should call in all the old bonds, certificates of indebtedness, and other promises to pay which had been issued by the Congress since the beginning of the Revolution.  These national obligations, he urged, should be put into one consolidated debt resting on the credit of the United States; to the holders of the old paper should be issued new bonds drawing interest at fixed rates.  This process was called “funding the debt.”  Such a provision for the support of public credit, Hamilton insisted, would satisfy creditors, restore landed property to its former value, and furnish new resources to agriculture and commerce in the form of credit and capital.

=Assumption and Funding of State Debts.=—­Hamilton then turned to the obligations incurred by the several states in support of the Revolution.  These debts he proposed to add to the national debt.  They were to be “assumed” by the United States government and placed on the same secure foundation as the continental debt.  This measure he defended not merely on grounds of national honor.  It would, as he foresaw, give strength to the new national government by making all public creditors, men of substance in their several communities, look to the federal, rather than the state government, for the satisfaction of their claims.

=Funding at Face Value.=—­On the question of the terms of consolidation, assumption, and funding, Hamilton had a firm conviction.  That millions of dollars’ worth of the continental and state bonds had passed out of the hands of those who had originally subscribed their funds to the support of the government or had sold supplies for the Revolutionary army was well known.  It was also a matter of common knowledge that a very large part of these bonds had