also did his best to undermine Washington's confidence in Hamilton. In his
personal dealings with Washington, Jefferson had every advantage, for he
had Washington's ear and could, more readily than Hamilton, direct the
currents of unconscious influence that produce the will to believe. But
Jefferson's animosity kept tempting him to overplay his hand in a way that
was fatal in the face of an antagonist so keen and so dexterous as
Hamilton.

In a letter of May 23, 1792, Jefferson presented to Washington an
elaborate indictment of Hamilton's policy as a justification of his own
behavior in organizing an opposition party in Congress. He charged
Hamilton with subverting the character of the Government by his financial
measures, the logical consequence of which would be "a change from the
present republican form of government to that of a monarchy." Hence the
need for organizing "the Republican party who wish to preserve the
government in its present form." Washington thought over the matter, and--
according to Jefferson--reopened the subject in a personal interview on
July 10. Being now fully apprised of Jefferson's case, Washington himself
prepared a brief of it, divided into numbered sections, and applied to
Hamilton for a statement of his ideas upon the "enumerated discontents,"
framed so "that those ideas may be applied to the correspondent numbers."
The proceeding is a fine instance of the care which Washington exercised
in forming his opinions. Of course, as soon as charges of corruption and
misdemeanor were reduced to exact statement the matter was put just where
Hamilton wanted to get it, and in the grasp of his powerful hands its
trashy character was promptly displayed. It is needless to go into
details, now that public loans, the funding of floating indebtedness in
excess of current income, and the maintenance of a national banking system
to supply machinery of credit, are such well recognized functions that the
wonder is how any statesman could have ever thought otherwise. Jefferson's