President Washington, believing in Assumption, took satisfaction in Hamilton's bargain with Jefferson which made Assumption possible. For the President saw in the act a power making for union, and union was one of the chief objects of his concern. The foremost of Hamilton's measures, however, for good or for ill, was the protective tariff on foreign imports. Experience has shown that protection has been much more than a financial device. It has been deeply and inextricably moral. It has caused many American citizens to seek for tariff favors from the Government. Compared with later rates, those which Hamilton's tariff set were moderate indeed. The highest duties it exacted on foreign imports were fifteen per cent, while the average was only eight and a half per cent. And yet it had not been long in force when the Government was receiving $200,000 a month, which enabled it to defray all the necessary public charges. Hamilton, in the words of Daniel Webster, "smote the rock of National resources and copious streams of wealth poured forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit and it stood forth erect with life." The United States of all modern countries have been the best fitted by their natural resources to do without artificial stimulation, in spite of which fact they still cling, after one hundred and thirty-five years, to the easy and plausible tariff makeshift. Washington himself believed that the tariff should so promote industries as to provide for whatever the country needed in time of war. Two other financial measures are to be credited to Hamilton. The first was the excise, an internal revenue on distilled spirits. It met with opposition from the advocates of State rights, but was passed after heated debate. The last was the establishment of a United States Bank. All of Hamilton's measures tended directly to centralization, the object which he and Washington regarded as paramount.