Jefferson, however, paid tribute to the curés who, throughout the kingdom, formed the mass of the clergy: "they are the only part favorably known to the people, because solely charged with the duties of baptism, burials, confession, visitation of the sick, instruction of the children, and aiding the poor, they are themselves of the people, and united with them."[219] The letter to Jay of June 24 is a day-by-day recital of the succession of events, the suspension of the meetings of the National Assembly, the serment of Jeu de Paume on the twentieth, the séance royale of June 23 and the refusal of the tiers état to deliberate separately.

Jefferson could not help admiring the tenacity of the Assemblée Nationale, but at the same time estimated that they were going too far and had formed projects that were decidedly too ambitious. "Instead of being dismayed with what has passed, they seem to rise in their demands, and some of them to consider the erasing of every vestige of a difference of order as indispensable to the establishment and preservation of a good constitution. I apprehend there is more courage than calculation in this project."[220]

A letter of Lafayette to Jefferson dated Versailles, July 4, contains an interesting postscriptum: "Will you send me the bill of Rights with your notes." A subsequent letter is even more pressing: "To-morrow I propose my bill of rights about the middle of the sitting; be pleased to consider it again and make your observations." As Lafayette introduced his "Déclaration Européenne des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" on July 11, 1789, the latter may be dated July 10. I had the good fortune to find in the Jefferson papers not one text but two of the Declaration.

One of the versions probably antedated by several months the meeting of the National Assembly. Jefferson had it in his hands as early as the beginning of 1799 and he even sent a copy of it to Madison on January 12.[221] The second text, far more important, was annotated by Jefferson in pencil. Although the handwriting is faint, it is perfectly legible. The emendations and corrections he suggested are quite characteristic, and are studied more in detail in the text I have published elsewhere.[222]

Some of the modifications suggested by Jefferson do not require any comment; they are mere verbal changes such as the substitution of "tels sont" for "tels que". But as Lafayette had enumerated among the essential rights of man "le soin de son honneur" and "la propriété", Jefferson put both terms in brackets, thus indicating that they should be taken out. The elimination of the first term is probably due to the fact that Montesquieu had indicated that "honneur" is the main principle on which rests monarchical government and is easily understandable. The elimination of the "droit de propriété" can only be explained if we refer to the document in which Jefferson had "explained to himself" his theory of natural rights, and established a distinction between the natural rights and the civil rights. Lafayette accepted the first correction but not the second; he was too much under the influence of his physiocratic friends even to understand the much more advanced theory of Jefferson. The project he submitted to the Assembly, as well as the three "Déclarations des droits de l'homme", consequently followed on this point the Virginia Bill of Rights rather than the Declaration of Independence.

In a similar way, Lafayette had listed the powers constituting the government in the following order: "exécutif, législatif et judiciaire", and refused to follow the order suggested by Jefferson's "législatif, exécutif, judiciaire". This was more than a mere question of arrangement; there was evidently in the minds of both Jefferson and his French friend a question of hierarchy and almost subordination; if it is a mere nuance, the nuance was very significant. The last paragraph deserves even more careful consideration. In the January version it read: "Et comme le progrès des lumières, et l'introduction des abus nécessitent de temps en temps une revision de la constitution...." The second edition annotated by Jefferson expressed the same idea in much more definite terms: "Et comme le progrès des lumières, l'introduction des abus et le droit des générations qui se succèdent nécessitent la révision de tout établissement humain, il doit être indiqué des moyens constitutionnels qui assurent dans certain cas une convocation extraordinaire de représentants dont le seul objet soit d'examiner et modifier, s'il le faut, la forme du Gouvernement." This mention of the "droit des générations qui se succèdent" seems a typically Jeffersonian idea. The same theory will be found fully developed in a letter to Samuel Kercheval written in 1816 and dealing with the revision of the Constitution of Virginia. It was expressed originally in a letter to James Madison, written from Paris on September 9, 1789. Curiously enough, Jefferson declared then that this theory had never been proposed before: "The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started on this or on our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequence as not only to merit decision, but places also the fundamental principles of every government."[223] It is true that this special point was not retained in the "Déclaration des droits de l'homme" as finally adopted by the Assemblée Nationale in its sessions of August, 1789, although it was proposed by Montmorency and reappeared as the last article of the "Déclaration" of the Convention Nationale of May 29, 1793. But one may wonder how Jefferson could overlook the fact that the same principle was embodied in Lafayette's "Declaration." It is very unlikely that he would have claimed credit for the idea if it had been originated by his friend. A more acceptable explanation would be to admit that having suggested to Lafayette a theory which was not retained by the committee, he felt perfectly free to state that "the question had never been started."

The American plenipotentiary was not an eye-witness of the famous scenes of the fourteenth of July, or as he calls it "the tumult of Paris", but he learned about it fully from M. de Corny, and wrote to Jay a long and interesting account (July 19) of the capture of La Bastille, the return of the king to Paris and the presentation of the national cockade.[224]

In the meantime he was placed in a very embarrassing situation by his French admirers. The prestige of the author of the Declaration of Independence was such that the committee in charge of a plan of constitution thought they could do no better than to call into consultation the Minister of the United States. Champion de Cicé, Archbishop of Bordeaux and chairman of the committee, sent him an urgent appeal to attend one of the first meetings, so that they might profit by the light of his reason and experience.[225] Jefferson, after mentioning the invitation, relates the incident in his "Autobiography" as follows: "I excused myself on the obvious considerations that my mission was to the King, as chief magistrate of the nation, that my duties were limited to the concerns of my own country, and forbade me to intermeddle with the internal transactions of that, in which I had been received under a specific charter." This may be the sense he wished to convey to Champion de Cicé but the actual letter is far less categorical. Contrary to his custom he wrote it himself, although it is in French, alleging that the dispatches for America took all his time and adding that the committee would lay themselves open to criticism if they invited to their deliberations a foreigner accredited to the head of the nation, when the very question under discussion was a modification and abridgement of his powers. But he assured the archbishop of his most sincere and most passionate wishes for the complete success of the undertaking, which was certainly stretching diplomatic proprieties to the limit.

The deliberations of the committee went on without Jefferson's official assistance; but shortly after the project of the constitution was presented, the deputies came to a deadlock on the veto power to be given to the king. After some stormy meetings, Lafayette conceived the idea that the house of the Minister of the United States was the only place near Versailles where some tranquillity could be obtained. He consequently invited eight of his friends to take dinner at the house of Jefferson, and having no time to consult him on the matter, scribbled a note in great hurry to ask Jefferson to make the necessary preparations for the unexpected guests: "Those gentlemen wish to consult with you and me; they will dine to-morrow at your house, as mine is always full."[226]

Jefferson has given a somewhat embellished account of the memorable dinner in his "Autobiography." The mention of it in a letter to John Jay a few weeks later is less florid and probably more accurate.[227] The members of the committee discussed together their points of difference for six hours, and in the course of the discussion agreed on mutual sacrifices. Writing from memory, at the age of seventy-seven, Jefferson added: "I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of argument, unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning, and chaste eloquence, disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity, as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato and Cicero."[228]

Whether Jefferson remained a silent witness during these six hours is not so improbable as it would seem. It may well be doubted whether his knowledge of French was sufficient to enable him to participate in an animated discussion with eight Frenchmen. Under the circumstances silence was as much a necessity as a virtue. But when the American minister woke up the next morning he realized that it was impossible to keep the thing secret and that the French Government had every right to blame him for lending his house for a discussion of French internal politics. Unpleasant as it was, the only thing to do was to make a clean breast of it. He went at once to Montmorin to tell him "with truth and candor how it happened that my house had been made the scene of conferences of such a character."—"He told me," Jefferson continued, "that he already knew everything which had passed," which is the stock answer of the professional diplomat, whether he wishes to appear well-informed or wants to draw some further information from his interlocutor. Jefferson opened his heart, and if Montmorin did not know everything before giving audience to the American minister, there was little he did not know after hearing his account of the dinner.

With this curious incident, Jefferson ends his account of the French Revolution. During the year, he had complained on several occasions that his French friends seemed unable to realize the importance of insisting on trial by jury in criminal cases. He finally persuaded one of the "abbés" to study the question thoroughly and on that occasion indicated exactly how he stood in matters of government. All told, his views had not changed much, and at that time he would not have accepted without reservations and qualifications the famous principle of "government by the people." There was still in his mind, if not in all his formulas, a tacit admission that all the people could not unreservedly participate in all branches of government. Nothing could be clearer than the distinctions he established and nothing could be less demagogical.

"We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to insure a long-continued and honest administration of its power." Then he proceeded to define, point by point, the extent to which the people could safely be allowed to participate in the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government.

Thus spoke the champion of democracy at the beginning of the French Revolution, after spending five years in Paris and supposedly permeating his mind with the wild theories of the French philosophers. And what he said of the people on this occasion did not apply to the French people alone, for he made it clear that it was the political theory applied "in America." It was essentially the theory of government by experts which he already had in mind when he proposed the reorganization of the College of William and Mary. In 1778, as well as in 1789, Jefferson did not hesitate to proclaim that if the source of all power was in the people, the people could not exercise their power in all circumstances, that they had to delegate their authority to men really qualified, retaining only the right to select them. This may not be the common acceptation of the term "Jeffersonian democracy", but I have a strong suspicion that on the whole Jefferson never changed much in this respect. He certainly never stood for mob rule, nor for direct government by the masses, and he knew too much about the delicate and complicated wheels of government to believe that the running of such a tremendous machine could be intrusted to untrained hands.

As for the French, he trusted them even less, and never believed, as long as he remained in France, that they were prepared for self-government. He refused to consider that a real revolution had started before his eyes or was even in sight. "Upon the whole," he wrote to Madison shortly before his departure from Paris, "I do not see yet probable that any actual commotion will take place; and if it does take place, I have strong confidence that the patriotic party will hold together, and their party in the nation be what I have ascribed it." Up to the last moment he held the belief that the king, "the substantial people of the whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy, formed a firm phalanx which must prevail."[230] The analysis of the situation sent to Jay just as he was about to leave Paris does not indicate even the possibility of establishing a republic, since the only parties he distinguished were:

Jefferson was not the man to indulge in effusions even when he was deeply moved and throughout his mission in France he deliberately refrained from any expression of personal feelings. But the love and friendship of the French for the United States was so general and so genuine, it formed such a contrast with the cold and tenacious enmity of Great Britain, that the American minister was won and conquered by it and had to come to the conclusion that "nothing should be spared to attach this country to us. It is the only one on which we can rely for support, under every event. Its inhabitants love us more, I think, than they do any other nation on earth. This is very much the effect of the good dispositions with which the French officers returned."[232] Everybody is familiar with the closing lines of Jefferson's account of his mission to France: "So, ask the traveller inhabitant of any nation, in what country would you rather live?—Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France."

These lines were written at the twilight of his life, when his memory took him back to the wonderful days he had lived in Paris, while the old régime was shedding the last rays of its evanescent glory. Less known, but far more revealing of his true feelings at the time, is a passage in one of his letters to James Madison. It is one of the very few times, and as a matter of fact, the first time when he declared that the nations of the world had to abandon their old code of selfishness and that a new principle of international life had to be recognized. For there is only one standard of morality, one code of conduct between nations as between individuals.

BOOK FOUR

CHAPTER I

THE QUARREL WITH HAMILTON

For more than two years Jefferson had repeatedly expressed the wish to be allowed to return to his native country, at least for a short visit. When he finally received official notification that his request had been granted, he departed from Paris rather abruptly and even without taking leave of his best friends. "Adieus are painful," he wrote to Madame de Corny, "therefore I left Paris without bidding one to you."[234] This is a naïve and quite significant confession of the difficulty he experienced in maintaining his puritanical restraint and impassibility at that time. He went with his two daughters from Le Havre to Cowes, and waited there till October 14 for favorable winds. After a rapid crossing on the Montgomery they sighted the "Capes" on November 13, and barely escaped being shipwrecked in the bay. Although damaged by fire and stripped of part of her rigging, the ship was able to reach Norfolk, and Jefferson promptly set out for Richmond and Monticello, stopping however on the way at Eppington with the Eppes. It was there that he received two letters from President Washington, one dated October 13, the other November 30, asking him to accept the post of Secretary of State in the newly formed cabinet. The President's letters were most flattering and indicated that he had been "determined, as well by motives of private regard, as a conviction of public propriety" to nominate him for the office.

Jefferson at first experienced the natural repugnance of a man who had put his heart into an important undertaking and was asked suddenly to abandon it. He was better acquainted with the situation in Paris than any man he could think of: it had taken him several years of constant work and patient efforts to bring the French officials over to his views. His best friends were in the new government and would help him to obtain for the United States better commercial terms and a more satisfactory debt settlement. Let us add that for a philosophical observer France offered the most fascinating spectacle, and Jefferson did not feel that life in Philadelphia could bring him the same social and intellectual pleasures as Paris. Quite significantly he wrote to Washington: "as far as my fears, my hopes, or my inclination enter into this question, I confess that they would not lead me to prefer a change." On the other hand, he did not make a categorical refusal, in case he should be "drafted", and the President formally nominated him.

Nothing else was done in the matter until Madison visited him at Monticello and acquainted him with the situation. But even Madison could not win his consent,[235] and the President had to assure Jefferson that the duties of his office would probably not be quite so complicated and hard to execute as he might have been led at the first moment to imagine.[236] It was not a command, but while the President left him free to decide he expressed a strong hope and wish that Jefferson would accept. So, on February 14 he sent his letter of acceptance.

In the meantime he had married Martha to Thomas Mann Randolph, Junior, "a young gentleman of genius, science, and honorable mind", who afterwards filled "a dignified station in the General Government, and the most dignified in his own State."[237] Although Jefferson had wished for such a marriage, he had left Martha free to make her own choice, as he explained in a letter to Madame de Corny: "Tho' his talents, disposition, connections, fortune, were such as would have made him my first choice, yet according to the usage of my country, I scrupulously suppressed my wishes, that my daughter might indulge in her own sentiments freely."[238] The marriage took place on April 2, 1790, and on the next day Jefferson set out for New York to take his place in the Cabinet. He reached Philadelphia on the twelfth. There he stopped to pay his respects to the man "he has succeeded but not replaced", old Doctor Franklin then on the sick bed from which he never arose. "My recent return from a country in which he had left so many friends, and the perilous convulsions to which they had been exposed, revived all his anxieties to know what part they had taken, what had been their course, and what their fate. He went over all in succession with a rapidity and animation almost too much for his strength." It was on this occasion that Franklin put in his hands a paper containing an account of his negotiations with Lord Howe to prevent a war between the colonies and their mother country, papers which, unfortunately, Jefferson entrusted later to William Temple Franklin, who "delayed the publication for more than twenty years."[239] Jefferson arrived in New York on the twenty-first, took his lodgings at the City Tavern, and finally rented a small house in Maiden Lane.

Congress was in session and business had accumulated on the desk of the new secretary: he plunged at once into work. All his colleagues had already taken charge of their respective departments: Colonel Alexander Hamilton was in charge of the Treasury, General Henry Knox of the War Department, Edmund Randolph, Attorney-general. Those were the only departments thus far created and among them the four secretaries divided all the different attributions of the executive power. With them he was to sit in Cabinet meetings presided over by Washington until his retirement from office, in December, 1793.

The distinction usually established between domestic and foreign politics is obviously an arbitrary one and does not correspond to reality. This was particularly true of an age when the attributes of the Secretary of State were far less specialized than in our day. Even if he had been inclined to neglect the questions of internal administration—to give himself entirely to foreign affairs—Jefferson would have been constantly reminded of the existence of many other problems of equal importance to the future of the nation by his colleagues and the President himself. In addition, it was Washington's ordinary practice not only to discuss all important measures in a Cabinet council, but often to request each member of his official family to give his opinion in writing on these questions. Such documents as have been preserved constitute a most precious source of information for the history of the period; they are usefully supplemented by the notes that Jefferson took at the time and transcribed "twenty five years or more" afterwards for the use of posterity. The three volumes "bound in marbled paper" in which Jefferson copied these notes, taken on loose scraps of paper, are the famous "Anas" which he collected to justify himself against the accusations that biographers of Washington—such as Marshall—had already launched against him. Although there is no reason to believe that Jefferson deliberately altered the old records, it is certain that they were edited, that many scraps of papers were discarded, although not destroyed, and that a "critical" edition of the "Anas" would not be without interest. They are preceded by an introduction in which, more than twenty-five years later, Jefferson gave an estimate of his former opponents, Hamilton and John Adams. This final judgment can in no way be used in discussing events that took place between 1790 and 1793, and it contains no indication worth retaining about Jefferson's attitude at that time towards his colleagues and the Vice President. The man who wrote this introduction in February, 1818, was really another Jefferson. He may tell us that he arrived in the midst of a bitter contest, "But a stranger to the ground, a stranger to the actors on it, so long absent as to have lost all familiarity with the subject, and as yet unaware of its object, I took no concern in it."[240] It must be admitted at the outset that such is not the impression one can gather from the correspondence.

That the financial structure of the Continental Congress had collapsed and that immediate remedies were necessary Jefferson knew as well and probably better than any other member of the Cabinet. He had not the expert knowledge of Hamilton, but more than once he had had to deal with financial questions, and when in Paris had displayed considerable skill in dealing with the members of the Committee of Commerce. He had prepared schedules for the payment of the French and Dutch loans and discussed finances with Dutch bankers in Amsterdam. Furthermore, his governorship of Virginia during the war had acquainted him with the question of State debts. If he could be tricked and made to hold the candle, as he said, there was no man who could resist the superior genius and Machiavellism of the arch financier of the United States. As a matter of fact, if he was hoodwinked, he was not at the beginning, at least, a blind or an unwilling victim.

Following the financial reorganization defined by the Constitution and the appointment of a Secretary of the Treasury, according to the Act of 1789, Hamilton prepared for the period under consideration four documents: Report on Public Credit, January 9, 1790; Report on a National Bank, December 5, 1790; Report on the Establishment of a Mint, May 1, 1791; Report on Manufactures, December 5, 1791.

The first subject for consideration was the national debt. The foreign debt was unquestionably a matter of national honor and had to be paid in full, according to the terms of contract: with the arrears of interest it amounted to $11,710,000. The domestic debt was estimated at $27,383,000 for the principal, $13,030,000 for accrued interest and $2,000,000 for unliquidated debt. After some opposition it was finally decided that holders of certificates would receive their face value with interest. But there remained the question of States debts which was hopelessly confused and destined to lead to a bitter controversy. The reorganization plan proposed that repayment could be made in a more orderly way through some sort of a central organization rather than through the States, and outlined the famous "Assumption" by which the Federal Government would "assume", with a discount to be determined, the debts incurred by the several States during the course of the war. It naturally meant that additional revenue had to be raised by Federal measures and consequently distributed between all the States, whose debts varied in nature and amount from State to State, some of which having already proceeded to a semi-reorganization, while others, having not suffered from the war, were financially in good condition. The opposition came naturally from the Southern States, whose population was smaller in comparison with the Northern States.

The opponents of the measure objected very strenuously at first, arguing that it would give an unfair advantage to those that had contracted debts too freely during the war, and would penalize those who had already set their financial house in order; and also that it would be a usurpation of powers not conferred by the Constitution to the Federal Government.

First defeated in Congress, the "Assumption" was finally adopted under circumstances now to be related. Jefferson's unofficial representative in Congress, Madison, had already strenuously opposed the measure proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury. When Jefferson arrived in New York to take possession of his office, the battle had been going on for some time, and four days later he wrote to T. M. Randolph that "Congress is principally occupied with the treasury report. The assumption of the State debts has been voted affirmatively in the first instance, but it is not certain that it will hold its ground through all the changes of the bill when it shall be brought in."[241] There is little doubt that Madison had already acquainted him with his views of the situation, but it is also probable that Jefferson paid small heed to them for the time being. He suffered for several weeks from severe headaches, he had to write many letters of farewell to his French friends, and the accumulation of reports and papers he found on his desk required all his attention.

In June, however, he expressed to George Mason his doubts that the "Assumption" would be finally adopted. But, far from siding with the out-and-out opponents of the measure, he thought it would be wiser to compromise, so he added, "my duties preventing me from mingling in these questions, I do not pretend to be very competent to their decision. In general, I think it necessary to give as well as take in a government like ours."[242]

As a matter of fact, it was already patent that an almost irreconcilable difference of opinion on the matter existed between Hamilton and the Virginians, and, a week later, Jefferson himself invited the Secretary of the Treasury to take dinner at his house with a few friends in order to hold an informal conference; for he thought it impossible that "reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion to form a compromise which was to save the Union." Jefferson has related the scene in the "Anas", but a somewhat different account is given in his letter to James Monroe, written June 20, 1790, from New York, in which he outlined the compromise. He mentioned that two considerations had impelled him to discuss it; first the fact that if some funding bill were not agreed to, the credit of the United States at Amsterdam would collapse and vanish and each State be left alone to take care of itself. Although he was not enthusiastic about the means to be employed and foresaw that the United States would have difficulties in raising the necessary money by Federal taxation instead of letting the States raise it themselves, he accepted the solution with open eyes: "In the present instance, I see the necessity of yielding to cries of the creditors in certain parts of the Union; for the sake of the Union, and to save us from the greatest of all calamities, the total extinction of our credit in Europe." More than any member of the Cabinet he was aware of the imminence of this danger. On the other hand, and in order to give some satisfaction to the Southern States, it would be agreed that Congress would be transferred to Philadelphia for a period of twelve to fifteen years, and thereafter, without further declaration, to Georgetown. This was clearly a "deal", and Jefferson knew it so well that he denied that it was one. "The Pennsylvania and Virginia delegates have conducted themselves honorably, on the question of residence. Without descending to talk about bargains, they have seen that their true interests lay in not listening to the insidious propositions made, to divide and defect them, and we have seen them at times voting against their respective wishes rather than separate." Whether the word bargain had been used or not is immaterial. Gentlemen sitting around a table after the cloth has been removed and the punch bowl brought in can come to an understanding "à demi mot."[243] Nothing official had been done yet, but writing to Dumas, the financial agent at Amsterdam, Jefferson, in order to maintain the credit of the country, put his best foot forward and solemnly declared "that there is not one single individual in the United States, whether in or out of office, who supposes they can ever do anything which might impair their foreign contracts." With respect to domestic paper, Dumas could rest assured that "justice would be done" and, although the question was terribly complicated, it was "possible that modifications may be proposed which may bring the measure, yet into an acceptable form."[244]

With Gilmer, he was more frank and indicated clearly that among the possible ways in which the conflict in Congress might yet terminate, the best probably would be "a bargain between the eastern members who have it so much at heart, and the Middle members who are indifferent about it, to adopt these debts without modification, on condition of removing the seat of government to Philadelphia or Baltimore." The third solution, which Jefferson preferred, would have proposed to divide the total sum between all the States in proportion to their census, and to establish the national capital first and temporarily at Philadelphia, then, and permanently at Georgetown.[245] This was not an ideal solution; it was a compromise which would at least present the advantage of giving new life to the agriculture and commerce of the South. The main objection, however, still remained, for the Federal Government would have to raise the imposts and overburden that source of revenue, but it seemed that "some sacrifice was necessary for the sake of peace."[246] Once again, but not for the last time, Jefferson saw himself in a dilemma. He was too far-sighted not to understand that the individual States would have to abandon some of their rights and a portion of their sovereignty in order to acquire more financial stability, and that more power would be concentrated in the hands of the Federal Government. On the other hand, he was no less firmly convinced that a secession would unavoidably result from a rejection of the "Assumption", and he was ready to sacrifice his most cherished preferences on the altar of the Union.

On August 14, Jefferson could announce to Randolph that Congress had separated

He discussed for the first time the exact ways and means in a letter to Gouverneur Morris on November 26, 1790, and indicated that additional funds would be provided by a tax on spirituous liquors, foreign and homemade, that the whole interest would be raised by taxes on consumption.... "Add to this what may be done by throwing in the aid of western lands and other articles as a sinking fund, and our prospect is really a bright one."[247]

It is perfectly true that the letter to Morris was to a great extent for publicity purposes, yet we do not find in it the slightest mark of disapproval of the tax itself, nor do we find it in a letter written to De Moustier[248] in which, on the contrary, Jefferson mentioned the advantages of duties on consumption, which fall principally on the rich; for it is "a general desire to make them contribute the whole money we want, if possible." It was not until February that doubts began to percolate into his mind, and he inquired from Colonel Mason "what was said in our country (Virginia), of the fiscal arrangements now going on." But he did not yet take the question really to heart:

This is the first indication of a rift between Jefferson and Hamilton.

Yet Jefferson was willing to yield more ground in order to avoid an open break. The Bank Bill of Hamilton had passed the Senate without difficulty; in the House it had been opposed on constitutional grounds by Madison but had finally obtained a majority. When the bill was sent to the President, Washington, unwilling to do anything unconstitutional, asked both the Attorney-general Randolph and Jefferson to give their opinion on the matter in writing. The report written on this occasion by the Secretary of State is a psychological document both interesting and revealing.

Jefferson started out by enumerating the different measures included in the Bank Bill, pointing out en passant that they were intended to break down the most ancient and fundamental laws of several States, such as those against mortmain, the laws of alienage, the rules of descent, the acts of distribution, the laws of escheat and forfeiture, the laws of monopoly. He then demonstrated to his own satisfaction that power to establish such an institution was neither specifically declared nor implied in any article of the Constitution. The only general statement that could be construed as authorizing it was a mention "to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers." Finally he undertook to prove that the bank might be convenient but was in nowise necessary. The conclusion was obvious after these very closely knitted pieces of legal reasoning: "Nothing but a necessity inevitable by any other means can justify such a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence." The President's veto could clearly be used in that case, since that was the buckler provided by the Constitution to protect it against the invasions of the legislature.