Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow hamilton to mchenry - The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 7

Return to Title Page for The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 7

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

hamilton to mchenry - Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 7 [1774]

Edition used:

The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (Federal Edition) (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). In 12 vols. Vol. 7.

Part of: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), 12 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


hamilton to mchenry

  • New York,

Dear Sir:

I send you the draft of a bill for regulating the medical establishment. (I avoid purposely the term department, which I would reserve for the great branches of administration.) You will see that nothing but an organization with a general outline of duty is provided for. Detailed regulations will properly come from the President and the departments; and the less these are legislated upon, in such cases, the better. When fixed by law, they cannot be varied, as experience advises.

This particular establishment is one to the right fashioning of which I feel myself more than ordinarily incompetent.

You mention in one of your letters, that, by the law of the 16th of July, the appropriation for the augmented army ceases at the end of the present session. This is one construction of that law. A different might perhaps be mentioned. But be this as it may, you will find by a subsequent act of the same date, entitled: “An act making certain appropriations,” etc., that 900,000 dollars are there appropriated for the same object, without any qualifications; and I take it for granted that whatever money should have been issued from the Treasury for the use of the War Department, previous to the end of the session, upon the first of those acts, might be expended afterwards by this department without any question about its regularity.