oof of his strong will,
self-reliance, and passionless impartiality than that he could stand
between two such furnaces as Hamilton on one side and Jefferson and
Madison on the other, both glowing at the intensest white heat, while he
remained usually as calm and as unmoved as if breathing the softest,
balmiest, and gentlest airs of a day in June. But all this personal
controversy in the public prints, and in the official intercourse of the
cabinet, left on both sides an intense exasperation, which could not
fail to have a controlling influence in the conduct of political
parties. Whether Jefferson was conscious or not--and whatever his
feeling was, Madison shared it with him--that in this paper warfare he
was signally defeated, the attempt to ruin Hamilton by an attack upon
him in Congress followed, if it was not the consequence of, the
mortification of defeat.

In February, 1793, Mr. Giles, a representative from Virginia, offered a
series of resolutions calling upon the President for certain information
relating to the finances. They were a bold attack upon the secretary of
the treasury, and, should it prove that they could not be satisfactorily
answered, would convict him of mismanagement of the financial affairs of
the government, of a disregard of law, of usurpation of power, and even
of embezzlement of the public funds. Any reasonable ground for believing
such charges to be well-founded would be quite sufficient to bring the
secretary to trial by impeachment. There was probably little doubt at
the moment as to whence this blow came; for though the hand might seem
the hand of Esau, the voice was the voice of Jacob. Behind Giles was
Madison; and behind Madison, of course, was Jefferson. Mr. John C.
Hamilton, in his "History of the Republic," asserts that the resolutions
were still--when he wrote, twenty-five years ago--in the archives of
the State Department at Washington, in Madison's handwriting; and he
further declares that Giles assured Rufus King that Madison was their
author.

Hamilton's reply, so far as any intentional wrong-doing was imputed to
him, was conclusive. There had been technical violations of acts of
Congress in one instance, but it was only to carry out the acts
themselves. Congress had, three years before, passed two acts
authorizing the negotiation of two loans, one for twelve million dollars
for the discharge of the foreign debt, and another for two million
dollars to be used at home. It had