You will perhaps learn, before this reaches you, that I have been appointed a Member of Congress. I expect to go to Philadelphia in the ensuing month, where I shall be happy to correspond with you with our ancient confidence; and I shall entreat you not to confine your observations to military subjects, but to take in the whole scope of national concerns. I am sure your ideas will be useful to me and to the public.
I feel the deepest affliction at the news we have just received of the loss of our dear and estimable friend Laurens. His career of virtue is at an end. How strangely are human affairs conducted, that so many excellent qualities could not insure a more happy fate! The world will feel the loss of a man who has left few like him behind, and America of a citizen whose heart realized that patriotism of which others only talk. I shall feel the loss of a friend I truly and most tenderly loved, and one of a very small number.
I am, dear Sir,
Truly your friend and servant,
A. Hamilton.
To General Greene.
HAMILTON TO ROBERT MORRIS.
Albany, October 26, 1782.
Sir:
I am honored with your letters of the 5th, 15th, and 16th instant.
The detail you have been pleased to enter into in that of the 15th, exhibits very cogent reasons for confining yourself, to pretty large denominations of notes; some of them had occurred to me, others had not; but I thought it my duty to state to you the operation which that circumstance had; as in the midst of the variety and extent of the objects which occupy your attention, you may not have so good opportunities of seeing the effect of your plans in detail. While I acknowledge that your observations have corrected my ideas upon the subject, and shown me that there would be danger in generally lessening the denominations of the paper issued, I should be uncandid not to add, that it still appears to me, there would be a preponderance of advantages in having a part of a smaller amount. I shall not trouble you at present with any further reasons for this opinion.