President Washington gave no reasons for his decision in favor of the Bank Bill. I will hereafter state the principle upon which I think it fair to presume that he acted. Hamilton was influenced by views which governed his conduct in every constitutional question that arose in his day. He did not, because he could not with any show of propriety, deny that the Constitution ought in strictness to be construed according to the intentions of those who made it; but believing, doubtless sincerely, from the beginning, that, so construed, it was insufficient for the purposes of good government and must prove a failure, he designedly gave it construction, in cases where he deemed that course necessary to the public interest, in opposition to what he knew to have been the intentions of the Convention. The objection that this was setting at naught the declared will of the people had but little weight with him. He believed that a majority of the Convention would have been content to incorporate the powers he now claimed in the Constitution if they had not been deterred by the fear that it would not be ratified, and for the opinion of a majority of the people he made proverbial his want of respect. He held them incapable of judging in such questions. He was as anxious as any man to promote their happiness and welfare, but he thought it a political necessity that this could only be done in despite of themselves; no man could possibly be less prone than he was to the employment of sinister means in private life, and yet he held them excusable in dealing with the people; he thought nothing effectual and salutary could be done with them without appeals to their special interests, without exciting their passions and turning them to the side of the Government. This was the vicious feature of his political creed, and proofs of its existence could be multiplied almost without end; but, as the subject will unavoidably and often present itself, I will content myself here with an extract from a letter written by him to his friend Morris, after the great public transactions in which he had been engaged were principally ended. The last letter to Morris, from which I have quoted, spoke of the past; this looks to the future, and shows the lengths to which he was yet, as he had always been, willing to go. The letter is dated April 6, 1802, in which, after complimenting Morris upon his efforts "in resisting the follies of an infatuated administration," he thus points his friend to the work before them:--