So two
of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but White with a revulsion of
stomach almost convulsive,) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton
undertook to carry the other point. In doing this, the influence he had
established over the eastern members, with the agency of Robert Morris
with those of the middle States, effected his side of the engagement;
and so the Assumption was passed, and twenty millions of stock divided
among favored States, and thrown in as a pabulum to the stock-jobbing
herd. This added to the number of votaries to the Treasury, and made its
chief the master of every vote in the legislature, which might give to
the government the direction suited to his political views.
I know well, and so must be understood, that nothing like a majority in
Congress had yielded to this corruption. Far from it. But a division,
not very unequal, had already taken place in the honest part of that
body, between the parties styled republican and federal. The latter
being monarchists in principle, adhered to Hamilton of course, as their
leader in that principle, and this mercenary phalanx added to them,
insured him always a majority in both Houses: so that the whole action
of the legislature was now under the direction of the Treasury. Still
the machine was not complete. The effect of the funding system, and of
the Assumption, would be temporary; it would be lost with the loss
of the individual members whom it had enriched, and some engine of
influence more permanent must be contrived, while these myrmidons were
yet in place to carry it through all opposition.
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