the post-office revenue, amounting to about a million dollars, for a
sinking fund, that the creation of a debt should always be accompanied
by the means of extinguishment; increased duties on foreign commodities,
that the government might be able to pay the interest on her new debts
and meet her current expenses; and more than one admonition for prompt
action, as the credit of the nation was reaching a lower level daily,
besides sinking more hopelessly into debt through arrears of interest.
The indebtedness he divided as follows: The foreign debt, $10,070,307,
with arrears of interest amounting to $1,640,071. The liquidated
domestic debt, $27,383,917, with arrears of interest amounting to
$13,030,168. The unliquidated part he estimated at $2,000,000, and the
aggregate debt of the State at $25,000,000; making a total of nearly
$80,000.000.

He also hinted at his long-cherished scheme of a National Bank, and a
possible excise law, and gave considerable space to the miserable
condition of landed property and the methods by which it might be
restored to its due value.

XVII

The talk in the drawing-room of Mrs. Croix that night was of little else
but the Secretary's Report. Mrs. Croix, so said gossip, had concluded
that this was the proper time for the demise of her recalcitrant
officer, and had retired to weeds and a semi-seclusion while Mrs.
Washington pondered upon the propriety of receiving her. Her court cared
little for the facts, and vowed that she never had looked so fair or so
proud; Hamilton, that she shone with the splendour of a crystal star on
the black velvet skies of the Tropics. She wore, this evening, a few
yards of black gauze which left bare a crescent of her shining neck and
the lower arms. Her bright hair was arranged in a mass of ringlets,
after a fashion obtaining in Europe, and surmounted by a small turban of
gauze fastened with a diamond sun. Many of the men who visited her
habitually called her Lady Betty, for she was one of those women who
invite a certain playful familiarity while repelling intimacy. Hamilton
called her, as the fancy moved him, Egeria, Boadicea, or Lady Godiva.

Clinton came in fuming. "It is not possible," he cried, "that the
Congress can be so mad as to be hoodwinked by this deep political scheme
for concentrating the liberties of the United States under the executive
heel. 'To cement more closely the union of the States and to add to
their security against foreign attac