ly valuable to the legislature, and
no less important and acceptable to the public." The House showed by its
votes how very far it was from agreeing with him. But Fisher Ames wrote
about that time: "Madison is become a desperate party leader, and I am
not sure of his stopping at any ordinary point of extremity." If it be
really true that he instigated this attack upon Hamilton, and was the
author of the resolutions, using Giles as his tool to get them before
the House, Ames's reflection was not uncharitable.

It would not be just, however, to leave the impression that the
hostility shown in this affair was purely personal. Both Jefferson and
Madison had a hearty hatred for Hamilton which would have been greatly
gratified could they have made it the plain duty of the President to put
him out of the Treasury Department a dishonored and ruined man. But this
particular outbreak of their enmity was intensified by their sincere and
earnest enthusiasm for France. They were quite willing to bring Hamilton
to grief at any time because he was Hamilton; they were more than
ordinarily exasperated against him just now because in recent newspaper
and other controversies he had altogether got the better of them; but in
this particular instance they wanted to punish him because of delay of
payments in discharge of the indebtedness of the United States to
France. This was the essential delinquency at which the Giles
resolutions were pointed. The difficulty was, not that the secretary of
the treasury was not careful enough of the public money, but that he was
too careful. He insisted upon being quite certain, when paying off a
public debt, that he was paying it to the right persons, and that no
risk should be incurred of its being demanded a second time. He felt
there was no such certainty about payments to France. The king was
dethroned; but it was not wise, the secretary thought, to be hasty in
recognizing revolutionary governments. It was a republic to-day; it
might be a regency to-morrow; a monarchy again the third day. It was
more prudent to await a reasonable period for the evidence of permanency
on one side or the other. Those old enough to remember the late war of
the rebellion know how important the maintenance of this doctrine was in
regard to the recognition of the rebel confederacy by England and
France.

But to all this Jefferson did not in the least agree; neither did
Madison. They were in full, even passionate, sympathy w