If this was different finance from that which Gallatin had taught in other days, and by which he had risen to popularity and power, it was at least as simple as all that Gallatin did; but the simplicity of his methods, which was their chief professional merit, caused also their chief reproach. History showed the financial charlatan to be popular, not so much because he was dishonest as because he gratified an instinct for gambling as deep as the instinct of selfishness; and a common notion of a financier was that of a man whose merit lay in the discovery of new sources of wealth, or in inventing means of borrowing without repayment. Gallatin professed to do neither. He did not recommend the issue of paper money; he saw no secret hoards buried in the unsold public lands; he would listen to no tricks or devices for raising money. If money was needed he would borrow it, and would pay whatever it was worth; but he would not suggest that any device could relieve the public from taxing itself to pay whatever the public chose to spend. “The ability and will of the United States faithfully to perform their engagements are universally known; and the terms of loans will in no shape whatever be affected by want of confidence in either. They must, however, depend not only upon the state of public credit, and on the ability to lend, but also on the existing demand for capital required for other objects. Whatever this may be, the money wanted by the public must be purchased at its market price.... The most simple and direct is also the cheapest and safest mode.” Gallatin instanced, as an extreme case, the borrowing of forty millions at eight instead of the legal rate of six per cent, which he declared an inconsiderable difference if compared with the effects of other modes of raising money. No one whose judgment deserved respect doubted the correctness of his opinion; but Republican congressmen had for twelve years denounced the Federalist loan of 1798, when five millions had been borrowed at eight per cent, and they hardly dared face their constituents when their own Secretary of the Treasury talked of borrowing forty millions at the same exorbitant rate. Gently as Gallatin hinted at “a proper selection of moderate internal taxes,” they remembered that these internal taxes had broken the Federalist party to pieces. They were angry with Gallatin for not providing other means for the war than loans and taxes, and they regarded him as not unwilling to check and chill the military ardor of the nation.