The Price of Greatness by Jay Cost

Author:Jay Cost
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

HAMILTON DID NOT comprehend Madison’s motives in dealing with Great Britain. In an October 1789 conversation, Hamilton and British agent George Beckwith agreed that Madison’s support of commercial discrimination was peculiar. Beckwith said he was “surprised to find” Madison among its advocates, given that “his character for good sense, and other qualifications” should have led him to “a very different conduct.” Hamilton concurred. “The truth is,” he said, “that although this gentleman is a clever man, he is very little acquainted with the world.… He has the same end in view that I have, and so have those gentlemen who act with him, but their mode of attaining it is very different.” As the events of the next six years would clearly demonstrate, Madison and Hamilton did not have “the same end in view”; rather, they imagined very different futures for the United States.26

Likewise, Madison did not understand the views of Hamilton on foreign affairs. The secretary’s attitude was illustrated by a conversation he had in the spring of 1794 with Hammond, who succeeded Beckwith as Britain’s representative in the United States. Jay was just about to be dispatched to Great Britain, and Hammond wanted some insight on what he would seek from his superiors. Hamilton responded that the United States would be looking for compensation for seized vessels and goods but said the request would “be couched in the most conciliatory language, and will evince the most sincere desire… to settle all the grounds of dispute… on an amicable and permanent principle.” Madison knew that Hamilton was desperate to remain in the good graces of Great Britain, but he did not appreciate the rationale behind it. Hamilton was animated not by a bias toward kingly forms of government but, rather, by the belief that the success of the United States depended upon cultivating a favorable disposition from Britain.27

There were three specific reasons Hamilton held this view. First, his intricate financial system was built on the premise that the government would honor its full debt obligations, which meant that the Treasury coffers had to remain filled. Given that import duties were the government’s primary source of revenue and that Great Britain was the nation’s primary supplier of foreign goods, it was crucial to keep trade flowing. As Hamilton wrote to Washington in the spring of 1794, “The cutting off of intercourse with Great Britain… will give so great an interruption to commerce” that it might “interfere with the payment of the duties” owed by the government, “which would cut up credit by the roots.” On the other hand, maintaining good trade relations would keep the Hamiltonian machine humming along and would continue to provide “astonishing progress in strength, wealth and improvement.”28

Second, Hamilton believed that Great Britain was substantially more powerful than the United States at the time. His ideal of “one great American system,” which he expounded in Federalist 11, was a long way off. In his judgment, achieving it would require a reliable system of public credit, a national

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