“Let us for a moment suppose,” he said, “that the rooms (the new ones, I mean) were to be hung with tapestry, or a very rich and costly paper, neither of which would suit my present furniture; that costly ornaments for the bow-windows, extravagant chimney-pieces and the like, were to be provided; that workmen, from extravagance of the times, for every twenty shillings' worth of work would charge forty shillings; and that advantage would be taken of the occasion to newly paint every part of the house and buildings; would there be any propriety in adding ten or twelve-and-a-half per cent. for all this to the rent of the house in its original state, for the two years that I am to hold it? If the solution of these questions is in the negative, wherein lies the difficulty of determining that the houses and lots, when finished according to the proposed plan, ought to rent for so much? When all is done that can be done,” he added, “the residence will not be so commodious as that I left in New York, for there (and the want of it will be found a real inconvenience at Mr. Morris's) my office was in the front room below, where persons on business immediately entered; whereas, in the present case, they will have to ascend two pairs of stairs, and to pass by the public rooms as well as the private chambers, to get to it.”[29]

It must be remembered that Washington refused to receive a salary for his services as president of the United States, but stipulated that the amount of his expenses should be paid by the government. In regulating these expenses, he was as careful to avoid extravagance as if his private purse had to be drawn upon to pay. In New York he lived frugally,[30] and he resolved to continue, in Philadelphia, the same unostentatious way of living, not only on his own account, but for the benefit of those connected with the government who could not afford to spend more than their salaries. His example had a most salutary effect. An illustrative case may be cited. When Oliver Wolcott, of Connecticut, was appointed first auditor of the treasury, he, like a prudent man, would not accept the office until he could visit New York, and ascertain whether he could live upon the salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year. He came to the conclusion that he could live upon one thousand, and he wrote to his wife, saying: “The example of the president and his family will render parade and expense improper and disreputable.” What a significant commentary!

The rent of Morris's house was at last fixed at three thousand dollars a year; and on the twenty-second of November Washington set out for Philadelphia, accompanied by his family, in a chariot drawn by four horses. They were allowed to travel without parade, and on reaching Philadelphia, on the twenty-eighth, they found their house ready for their reception. Yet it was nearly a month before they were prepared to receive company. Mrs. Washington's first levee or reception in Philadelphia was on Friday, the twenty-fifth of December, where, according to eye-witnesses, there was an assemblage of “the most brilliant, beautiful, well-dressed, and well educated women that had ever been seen in America.”

The season opened gayly. “I should spend a very dissipated winter,” wrote the vice-president's wife to a friend, “if I were to accept one half the invitations I receive, particularly to the routs, or tea-and-cards.” The city, for a few weeks after the assembling of Congress, appeared to be intoxicated. But Washington and his wife were proof against the song of the syren. They could not be seduced from their temperate habits in eating, drinking, and sleeping, by the scenes of immoderate pleasure around them. They held their respective levees on Tuesdays and Fridays, as in New York, without the least ostentation; and Congressional and official dinners were served in a plain way, without any extravagant displays of plate, ornament, or variety of dishes. Mrs. Washington's levees always closed at nine o'clock. When the great clock in the hall struck that hour, she would say to those present, with a complacent smile, “The general always retires at nine, and I usually precede him.” In a few minutes the drawing-room would be closed, the lights extinguished, and the presidential mansion would be as dark and quiet before ten o'clock as the house of any private citizen.

Washington entered upon his public duties with great energy on his arrival in Philadelphia. His health was almost perfectly restored, and subjects of profound interest demanded the attention of Congress. That body assembled on the sixth of December, and on the eighth, in the presence of both houses sitting in the senate-chamber, the president delivered, in person, his second annual message. He opened by congratulating Congress on the financial prosperity of the country, the import duties having produced, in a little more than thirteen months, the sum of one million, nine hundred thousand dollars. He had without difficulty obtained a loan in Holland for the partial liquidation of the foreign debt; and, in consequence of the increasing confidence in the government, certificates of the domestic debt had greatly increased in value. He informed them that Kentucky was about to ask for admission into the Union as a sovereign state. He called their attention to the Indian war commenced in the northwestern territory; and after some allusion to the disturbed state of Europe, growing out of recent events in France, he suggested measures for the protection of American commerce in the Mediterranean sea, where it was continually exposed to the depredations of corsairs of the Barbary powers.

He called their attention to regulations concerning the consular system that had been proposed and partially established; to the creation of a mint, the right of coinage being delegated to the federal government alone; to a uniform system of weights and measures; to a reorganization of the post-office system, and a uniform militia.

The two most important measures brought forward at the beginning of the session were, a plan for a national bank, and a tax on ardent spirits distilled within the United States. In a former communication to Congress, the secretary of the treasury recommended the establishment of a national bank, as a useful instrument in the management of the finances of the country; and now, at the opening of a new session, he presented a special report, in which the policy of such a measure was urged with Hamilton's usual strength and acuteness of logic. He argued upon premises resting on the alleged facilities afforded to trade by banks, and the great benefits to be expected from a national one in a commercial point of view. He chiefly dwelt upon the topic of the convenience to the government of a paper medium in which to conduct its monetary transactions, and especially as a ready resource for such temporary loans as might from time to time be required.

Such reasons, utterly without force in the light of subsequent experience, were wise and important at that time, and commended themselves to the people of the United States, because they had not forgotten the convenience afforded by the bank of North America, established by Robert Morris in 1781, chiefly for the purpose of assistance to himself in the difficult office of superintendent of finance. That was the first experiment in America in the issue of a currency redeemable at sight—a promissory note payable on demand—which had been the practice of the bank of England for nearly a hundred years. It was a system so much superior to the colonial loan-office plans, and the scheme upon which the continental paper-money had been issued during the earlier years of the war for independence, that the people generally received Hamilton's recommendation with favor. But it met with determined opposition in Congress. The anti-federal feeling which from the close of 1789 had manifested itself, principally in criticisms upon the federal constitution, now assumed the shape of a party opposed to the financial policy of the administration. At the head of this opposition was Mr. Jefferson, the secretary of state; and the herald's trumpet for the tilt was sounded by the Virginia assembly, in the adoption of a resolution, declaring so much of the late act of Congress as provided for the assumption of the state debts “repugnant to the constitution of the United States,” and “the exercise of a power not expressly granted to the general government.” That clause of the act for funding the continental debt, which restrained the government from redeeming at pleasure any part of that debt, was denounced as “dangerous to the rights, and subversive of the interests, of the people.”

The bank project encountered very little opposition in the senate, where the bill originated; but in the house it was assailed vehemently, chiefly on the ground of its being unconstitutional. Its policy was questioned, and the utility of banking systems stoutly denied. The arguments on both sides, in relation to the constitutionality of the measure (the constitution being utterly silent on the subject), assumed on frequent occasions an extremely metaphysical tone. It was argued, in favor of a bank, that the power to establish one was implied in the powers delegated to Congress by the constitution to collect a revenue, and to pay the debts of the United States, and in the authority expressly granted to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying those powers into execution.

1791