The public credit, the restoration of commercial confidence was the first and most pressing want of the country as well as of the new government, and in this Hamilton found a pretext for adopting the British system of finance which he foresaw would enable his party to recover to a great extent the ground lost in the creation of the government, and in practice, whatever might be the theory entertained, restore it or closely approximate it to his darling model—that favorite British system which he and his associates believed to be an embodiment of political wisdom. The idea of the British aristocracy that government is an instrument designed for their benefit was deeply implanted in the northern mind, and is so still. In England it is a practice which the idea has simply originated in. Official employments, pensions and special legislation or monopolies in England, embrace all or nearly all the ruling class, and therefore, the idea that government is established for their benefit necessarily follows. This idea of government is generally embraced by the northern mind even in our own times, and the habit of looking to this vast and beneficent power as the source of pecuniary benefits to the people, if not to a class, is almost universal among the northern people. Hamilton, brought up under the British system, was deeply imbued with it, and, placed in power, it was natural enough that he and his associates should construe the Constitution in a way to give it effect. The state debts that were contracted for carrying on the war were assumed by the new government and formed a basis for a national bank which was soon established, and the rapid restoration of public credit that followed the restoration of public order and a settled society in a young and vigorous country was claimed by the federal writers as a proof of the wisdom of their policy and the extraordinary ability of their leader. Mr. Jefferson opposed this policy from the beginning in all its aspects—the adoption of the British system of finance, the assumption of state debts, the creation of a national bank, in short, the entire programme of federal policy. He held with the state-rights democracy of our day, that the central government was a factitious and limited government, whose powers were derived, not from the collective people but from the people of the several or _United States_, that the Constitution should be literally construed, and the practice under it strictly confined to the plainly enumerated objects, and, therefore, that the creation of a national bank, assumption of state debts, etc., were unconstitutional in principle and dangerous in practice.