This measure, like that which preceded it, was well calculated to strengthen the suspicion with which the minds of his opponents became thoroughly imbued, that Hamilton in all his measures had in view the advancement of partisan objects, from its peculiar adaptation to the promotion of a leading point in his whole policy,--that of weakening State authority and strengthening that of the General Government at their expense. The distinctness and strength of expression with which this policy was avowed by him, in papers published by his son, have already been seen. Among the means suggested was the adoption of measures by which the attention of the people might be diverted from the State governments, upon which it was thought to be too intensely fixed, and turned towards the Federal head, and by which their passions might be excited and turned in the same channel. What single measure could exert greater influence in giving effect to this policy or show more strikingly the hand of a master than that by which the intense and constant solicitude of the holders of twenty-five millions of debts, scattered, in comparatively small sums, through the different States, and embracing, it is fair to presume, the most active of their citizens, was turned from the local authorities to the Federal Government, first for the settlement of the amount, and next for the payment of their demands,--by which the States themselves became liable for the amounts so paid to a Government which, certainly in some of its departments, regarded them as rival not to say dangerous powers, and by which also the disreputable scramble for those debts, commenced in the case of the certificates of the United States, would be revived.