land to enforce obedience; and they hated each other. As
the Congress had demonstrated its inefficiency to the most inactive in
public affairs, the contempt of the States is hardly to be wondered at.
It is not too much to say that troops were recruited by Washington's
influence alone, and kept from mutiny by his immortal magnetism. The
finances of the Revolution were in such a desperate condition that Sir
Henry Clinton built his hopes of success--now he had discovered that no
victory gave him a permanent advantage--upon the dissolution of the
American army, possibly an internal war. With depreciated bills in
circulation amounting to one hundred and sixty millions of dollars, a
public debt of nearly forty millions in foreign and domestic loans, the
Congress had, in March, ordered a new emission of bills; the result had
been a season of crazy speculation and the expiring gasp of public
credit. In addition to an unpaid army, assurances had been given to the
French minister that not less than twenty-five thousand men should be
ready for the next campaign; and how to force the States to recruit
them, and how to pay them when in the field, was the present question
between Headquarters and Congress.

From the time that Hamilton's mind had turned to finance, in his
nineteenth year, he had devoted the greater part of his leisure to the
study and thought of it. Books on the subject were few in those days;
the science of political economy was unborn, so far as Hamilton was
concerned, for Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," published in 1776, had
not made its way to America. He assimilated all the data there was to be
found, then poured it into the crucible of his creative faculty, and
gradually evolved the great scheme of finance which is the locomotive of
the United States to-day. During many long winter evenings he had talked
his ideas over with Washington, and it was with the Chief's full
approval that he finally went to work on the letter embodying his scheme
for the immediate relief of the country. It was addressed to Robert
Morris, the Financier of the Revolution.

The first part of the letter was an essay on inflated and depreciated
currency, applied personally, the argument based on the three following
points: There having been no money in the country, Congress had been
unable to avoid the issuance of paper money. The only way to obtain and
retire this immense amount of depreciated paper money was to obtain real
money. Real