d dollars each; eight millions to be subscribed by
individuals, and the other two millions by the United States. It was to
be managed by twenty-five directors, chosen annually by the
stockholders, and its headquarters were to be at Philadelphia.

The opponents of the bank, and especially Mr. Jefferson, presumed to
censure the president because, in the conscientious exercise of his
power, he made the act a law by affixing his signature. The secretary of
state had other than constitutional grounds for his opposition to the
measure. He had conceived an irrepressible distrust of Hamilton. It
seemed almost like a monomania. He considered the bank as one of the
engines in a scheme intended by Hamilton to make the national
legislature subservient to, and under the direction of, the treasury,
for the purpose of promoting his monarchical schemes. He afterward
affirmed that Washington was deceived by Hamilton, and that he did not
perceive the drift or effect of his financial schemes; and ungenerously
and unfairly remarked, that, "unversed in financial projects and
calculations and budgets, his approbation of them was bottomed on his
confidence in the man."

No person knew better than Mr. Jefferson the unfairness of this
assertion. None knew better than he how little Washington was prone to
be swayed in his judgment by partiality either toward a man or a
measure. He always weighed everything with the greatest care and most
profound wisdom, and the opinions of friends and foes were always
submitted to the alembic of his keen penetration, and the tests of his
almost unfailing sagacity, before they were acted upon. "Hamilton and
myself," wrote Jefferson, "were daily pitted in the cabinet like two
cocks." The personal resentments and consequent prejudices of the
secretary of state appear to have frequently warped his judgment and
fettered his generosity.

An increase of duties on imported spirits, and an excise tax on those
produced at home, in order to increase the revenue required by the
charges growing out of the assumption of the state debts, recommended by
the secretary of the treasury and submitted to the consideration of
Congress in the form of an act, excited warm discussion. An attempt was
made to strike out the excise, but failed; and after animated and
sometimes violent debates, it was carried by a vote in the house of
thirty-five to twenty-one.[31] The portion of the act relating to excise
was received with indignation