LETTER CCXCIV.--TO ALBERT GALLATIN, April 1,1802
TO ALBERT GALLATIN.
Washington, April 1,1802.
Dear Sir,
I have read and considered your report on the operations of the sinking
fund, and entirely approve of it, as the best plan on which we can set
out. I think it an object of great importance, to be kept in view and
to be undertaken at a fit season, to simplify our system of finance, and
bring it within the comprehension of every member of Congress. Hamilton
set out on a different plan. In order that he might have the entire
government of his machine, he determined so to complicate it as that
neither the President nor Congress should be able to understand it, or
to control him. He succeeded in doing this, not only beyond their reach,
but so that he at length could not unravel it himself. He gave to the
debt, in the first instance, in funding it, the most artificial and
mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up his appropriations
of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all,
and applied them to different objects in reversion and remainder, until
the whole system was involved in impenetrable fog; and while he was
giving himself the airs of providing for the payment of the debt, he
left himself free to add to it continually, as he did in fact, instead
of paying it.
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