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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

to william seton 1 - Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 9 [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. 9.

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

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to william seton1

  • Philadelphia,

January 18, 1791.

My Dear Sir:

I have learnt with infinite pain the circumstances of a new bank having started up in your city. Its effects cannot but be in every way pernicious. These extravagant sallies of speculation do injury to the government and to the whole system of public credit, by disgusting all sober citizens and giving a wild air to every thing. ’t is impossible but that three great banks in one city must raise such a mass of artificial credit as must endanger every one of them, and do harm in every view.

I sincerely hope that the Bank of New York will listen to no coalition with this newly engendered monster; a better alliance, I am strongly persuaded, will be brought about for it, and the joint force of two solid institutions will, without effort or violence, remove the excrescence which has just appeared, and which I consider as a dangerous tumor in your political and commercial economy.

I express myself in these strong terms to you confidentially, not that I have any objection to my opinion being known as to the nature and tendency of the thing.

to

  • Philadelphia,

April 10, 1791.

Sir:

Your letter of the 15th of March duly came to hand, though not till after the arrangement for the execution of the act mentioned in your letter had been made.

I wish you not to consider it as a mere compliment, when I say that the light in which your character stands could not fail to have brought you into view in that arrangement, and could you be minutely acquainted with every circumstance that in the President’s mind inclined the balance a different way, you would find no reason to be dissatisfied with the estimation in which you have been held. You are well aware that in a comparison of the pretensions of men of merit, collateral considerations may be often justly allowed to turn the scale.

Suffer me to add that in the course of those future opportunities which may be expected to occur, it would give me a pleasure, as far as may be in my power, to be instrumental in furnishing you with a proper occasion for the exercise of your talents and zeal in the service of the national government.

[1]William Seton, a Scotchman by birth, and a well-known business man of New York. He was Cashier of the Bank of New York, of which Hamilton was one of the founders. See History of the Bank of New York, by Henry W. Domett.