freer from them. There are several members who have become proprietors in the Bank, a few, to a pretty large amount, say, fifty or sixty shares; but all operations of this kind were necessarily subsequent to the determination of the measure. Can it be culpable to invest property in an institution which has been established for the most important national purposes? Can that property be supposed to corrupt the holder? It would render him friendly to the preservation of the Bank, but could give him no improper bias on other questions? Were the provisions for the debt annual, it would be impossible to conceive a more fruitful source of corruption than this!

It is a fact which cannot soon be forgotten, that at the very time Jefferson was seeking to alarm the President by charges of the corruption of Congress through the Bank of the United States, he wrote, proposing the establishment of a bank at Richmond, authorized to discount on deposits of wheat-"Could not a counter bank be set up" * * * "and would not such a bank enlist the legislature in its favor, and against the Treasury bank." The legislature of Virginia was chiefly composed of the wheat-growers of a State then greatly indebted.

As to the constructions of the Constitution, Hamilton proceeded to observe, "there are some things the General Government has clearly a right to do. There are others it clearly has no right to meddle with, and there is a good deal of middle ground. Some of this may have been occupied by the National Legislature, but this is no evidence of a desire to get rid of limitations in the Constitution. The truth is, one description of men is disposed to do the essential business of the Nation by a liberal construction of the powers of the Government; another, from disaffection, would fritter away those powers—a third, from an

* Jefferson to Washington. July 3, 1792.

overweening jealousy, would do the same thing—a fourth, from party and personal opposition are torturing the Constitution into objections to every thing they do not like. The Bank is one of the measures which is deemed by some the greatest stretch of power, and yet its constitutionality has been established in the most satisfactory manner, and the most incorrigible theorists among its opponents would in one month's experience, as head of the Department of the Treasury, be compelled to acknowledge that it is an absolutely indispensable engine in the management of the Finances, and would quickly become a convert to its perfect constitutionality."

As to the charge, that the ultimate object was to prepare the way for a change of the Republican form of Government to that of a monarchy, after the British model, he answered; "To this there is no other answer than a flat denial.* The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this Country, by employing the influence and force of a government continually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will believe.

"If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible, it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life of any individual, to effect it. Who then would

Jefferson to Lafayette, June 16, 1792. "You will wonder to be told that it is from NEW ENGLAND chiefly, that these champions for a King, Lords and Commons come. They get some important associations from NEW YORK, and are puffed by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption, made up after the model of their beloved England-too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers." Three days after, Jefferson writes Thomas Paine-"It is but too true, that we have a sect preaching up and panting after an English constitution of Kings, Lords and Commons, and whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets and mitres, but our people, my good friend, are firm and unanimous in their principles of republicanism."

VOL. V.-4

enter into such a plot? For what purpose of interest or ambition? To hope that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanction to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country, can surely never be brought to it, but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the arts of popular demagogues.

"The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the Republican system of this Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of Monarchy for repose and security. Those, then, who resist a confirmation of public order are the true artificers of monarchy. Not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty; when such a man is seen to mount the hobby-horse of popularity, to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day; it may justly be suspected that his o! ject is to throw things into confusion, that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'

"It has aptly been observed that Cato was the Tory, Cæsar the whig of his day. The former frequently resisted; the latter always flattered the follies of the peo

ple. Yet the former perished with the Republic-the lat

ter destroyed it.

"No popular government was ever without its Catalines and Cæsars:-these are its true enemies."

Having thus adverted to the character of Burr, he proceeded :

"As far as I am informed, the anxiety of those who are calumniated is to keep the Government in the state in which it is-which they fear will be no easy task, from a natural tendency in the state of things to exalt the local on the ruins of the National Government. Some of them appear to wish, in a constitutional way, a change in the Judiciary department of the Government, from an apprehension that an orderly and effectual administration of justice cannot be obtained without a more intimate connection between the State and National tribunals. But even this is not an object of any set of men, as a party. There is a difference of opinion about it on various grounds, among those who have generally acted together. -As to any other change of consequence, I believe nobody dreams of it.

66

'Tis curious," he proceeded, “to observe the anticipations of the different parties. One side appears to believe, that there is a serious plot to overturn the State Governments, and substitute a Monarchy to the present Republican system. The other side firmly believes, that there is a serious plot to overturn the General Government, and elevate the separate power of the States upon its ruins. Both sides may be equally wrong; and their mutual jealousies may be material causes of the appearances which mutually disturb them, and sharpen them against each other."

In reply to the assertion, that a change into a monarchy was contemplated in the Convention, he stated:

"This is a palpable misrepresentation. No man that I know of, contemplated the introducing into this Country a monarchy. A very small number (not more than three. or four) manifested theoretical opinions favorable, in the abstract, to a Government like that of Great Britain,* but every one agreed that such a constitution, except as to the general distribution of departments and powers, was out of the question in reference to this country. The member who was most explicit on this point (a member from New York) declared in strong terms, that the Republican theory ought to be adhered to in this Country as long as there was any chance of its success;--that the idea of a perfect equality of political rights among the citizens, exclusive of all permanent or hereditary disti: ctions, was of a nature to engage the good wishes of every good man, whatever might be his theoretic doubts. That it merited his best efforts to give success to it in practice, that hitherto, from an incompetent structure of the Government, it had not had a fair trial, and that the endeavor ought then to be to secure to it a better chance of success by a Government more capable of energy and order. There is not a man at present in either branch of the Legislature, who, that I recollect, had held language in the Convention favorable to a monarchy. *** In the Senate, there are nine or ten who were members of the Convention; in the House of Representatives not more than six or seven. Of those who are in the last mentioned House none can be considered as influential but Mr. Madison and Mr. Gerry. Are they Monarchy men?"

* Madison admits this in a letter to Andrew Stevenson, 25th March, 1826. "Certain it is that not more than two or three members of the body, and they, rather theoreticaly, than practically, were in favor of an unlimited government founded on a consolidation of the States." "Selections from his private correspondence" published by J. C. McGuire, p. 62.