Then the hostile camps faced each other on the questions of the domestic debt and assumption. In regard to the former, common decency finally prevailed, but the other threatened to disrupt the Union, for the Eastern States threw out more than one hint of secession did the measure fail. Madison, without further subterfuge, came forth at the head of his State as the leader of the anti-assumptionists. He offered no explanation to his former chief and none was demanded. For a time Hamilton was bitterly disgusted and wounded. He shrugged his shoulders, finally, and accepted his new enemy with philosophy, though by no means with amiability and forgiveness; but he had seen too much of the selfishness and meanness of human nature to remain pained or astonished at any defection. When June came, however, he was deeply uneasy. On March 29th the resolutions providing for the foreign debt and for paying in full the principal of the domestic debt to the present holders passed without a division. So did the resolution in favour of paying the arrears of interest in like manner with the principal of the domestic debt. But the resolution in favour of assumption was recommitted. The next day the friends of assumption had the other resolutions also recommitted, and the furious battle raged again. Finally, on June 2d, a bill was passed by the House, which left the question of assumption to be settled by a future test of strength. The anti-assumptionists were triumphant, for they believed the idea would gain in unpopularity. But they reckoned without Hamilton. XX Jefferson had arrived on March 21st, and entered at once upon his duties as Secretary of State. He disapproved of the assumption measure, but was so absorbed in the perplexing details of his new office, in correspondence, and in frequent conferences with the President on the subject of foreign affairs, that he gave the matter little consecutive thought. Moreover, he was dined every day for weeks, all the distinguished New Yorkers, from Hamilton down, vying with each other in attentions to a man whose state record was so enlightened, and whose foreign so brilliant, despite one or two humiliating failures. He rented a small cottage in Maiden Lane, and looked with deep disapproval upon the aristocratic dissipations of New York, the frigid stateliness of Washington's "Court." The French Revolution and the snub of the British king had developed his natural democratism into a controlling passion, and he would have preferred to find in even the large cities of the new country the homely bourgeois life of his highest ideals.