More serious embarrassments soon put his firmness to a more severe test. After the establishment of the Constitution, the finances formed a question of vast importance to the republic, perhaps the principal one. They were in a state of extreme confusion; there were debts of the Union, contracted at home and abroad; debts of individual States, contracted in their own names, but in behalf of the common cause; warrants for requisitions; contracts for supplies; arrears of interest; also other claims, different in their character and origin, imperfectly known and not liquidated. And at the end of this chaos, there were no settled revenues, sufficient to meet the expenses which it imposed. Many persons, and, it must be acknowledged, the democratic party in general, were unwilling that light should be thrown into this chaos by assuming all these obligations, or even by funding them. {122} They would have imposed upon each State its debts, however unequal the burden might have been. They would have made distinctions between the creditors; classifications founded upon the origin of their claims and the real amount of what they had paid for them. In short, all those measures were proposed which, under an appearance of scrupulous investigation and strict justice, were in reality nothing but evasions to escape from or reduce the engagements of the state. As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton proposed the opposite system;--the funding and the entire payment, at the expense of the Union, of all the debts actually contracted for the common benefit, whether with foreigners or Americans, and whoever were the contractors or the present holders, and whatever was the origin of the claims;--the laying of taxes sufficient to secure the redemption of the public debt;--the formation of a national bank, capable of aiding the government in its financial operations, and of sustaining its credit. {123} This system was the only moral and manly one; the only one in conformity with honesty and truth. It strengthened the Union, by uniting the States financially, as they were united politically. It established American credit, by this striking example of fidelity to public engagements, and by the guaranties which it afforded for their fulfilment. It fortified the central government by rallying around it the capitalists, and by giving it powerful means of influence over them and through them.