judgment, subversive of the principles of good government,
and dangerous to the union, peace, and happiness of the country." At
first he was disposed to believe, because of his "previous impressions
of the fairness of Mr. Madison's character," that there was nothing
personal or factious in this hostility. But he soon changed his mind. Up
to the time of the meeting of the First Congress there had always been
perfect accord between them, and Hamilton accepted his seat in the
cabinet "under the full persuasion," he said, "that from similarity of
thinking, conspiring with personal good-will, I should have the firm
support of Mr. Madison in the general course of my administration." But
when he found in Madison his most determined opponent, either open or
covert, in the most important measures he urged upon Congress,--the
settlement of the domestic debt, the assumption of the debts of the
States, and the establishment of a national bank,--he was compelled to
seek for other than public motives for this opposition. "It had been,"
he declared, "more uniform and persevering than I have been able to
resolve into a sincere difference of opinion. I cannot persuade myself
that Mr. Madison and I, whose politics had formerly so much the same
point of departure, should now diverge so widely in our opinions of the
measures which are proper to be pursued."

In the letter from which these extracts are made Jefferson and Madison
are painted as almost equally black, though the color was laid the
thicker on Jefferson, if there was any difference. Hamilton seemed to
think that, if Jefferson was the more malicious, Madison was the more
artful. He is accused of an attempt to get the better of the secretary
of the treasury by a trick which was dishonorable in itself, and at the
same time an abuse of the confidence reposed in him by Washington.
Before sending in his message at the opening of the Second Congress the
President submitted it to Madison, who, Hamilton declares, so altered
it, by transposing a passage and by the addition of a few words, that
the President was made to seem, unconsciously to himself, to approve of
Jefferson's proposal to establish the same unit for coins as for
weights. This would have been to disapprove of the proposal of the
secretary of the treasury that the dollar should remain the unit of
coinage. The statement rests on Hamilton's assertion; and as he had
forgotten the words which made the change he complained of, and