He also, to make perfectly sure,
wrote himself to Washington, candidly setting forth outside criticism,
and his letter took the form of a well-arranged indictment of the
Treasury measures. This method had the advantage of assailing Hamilton
without incurring any responsibility, and the charges were skilfully
formulated and ingeniously constructed to raise in the mind of the
reader every possible suspicion. At this point Washington comes for
the first time into the famous controversy from which our two great
political parties were born. He did exactly what Jefferson would not
have done, sent the charges all duly formulated to Hamilton, and asked
him his opinion about them. As the accusations thus made against the
policies of the government and the Secretary of the Treasury were all
mere wind of the "monarchist" and "corrupt squadron" order, Hamilton
disposed of them with very little difficulty. The whole proceeding,
if Jefferson was aware of it at the time, must have been a great
disappointment to him. But his mistake was the natural error of an
ingenious man wasting his efforts on one of great directness and
perfect simplicity of character. Hamilton's answer was what Washington
undoubtedly expected. He knew the hollowness of the attack, but none
the less he was made anxious by it as an indication of the serious
party divisions rising about him. This, however, was but the
beginning, and he was soon to have much more direct evidence of the
grave nature of a political conflict, which he then could not bring
himself to believe was irrepressible.
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