profits of the post-office he estimated at almost a million dollars annually, to be applied also to the national expenses. [Illustration: CERTIFICATE OF DEBT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. From the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. This was one of the Revolutionary obligations assumed and paid under Hamilton's financial measures.] The members of Congress, at the subsequent session, with remarkable unanimity, concurred in these recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury for the redemption of the national obligations, including both the debt owed to foreign nations and that incurred to domestic holders during the exigencies of the war. But upon another proposition, that the United States should assume the debts incurred by the several States during the war, there was strong opposition. It was said that such action would lead to speculation and stock-jobbery in buying up these debts and converting them into new forms. The original holders had long since disposed of them to brokers, who would be enriched by national legislation. It was the old clash between the moneyed and the moneyless classes. Although the action would be a direct interference of the National Government with State affairs, the debates turned on economic rather than constitutional grounds. If Hamilton had the foresight with which he is credited by his admirers, if he saw that the allegiance of the people would gradually be won away from the States to the Central Government because the latter was redeeming promises which the States had long been endeavouring to meet, if he was taking advantage of the selfishness and cupidity of the deeply indebted States, there is no evidence to show that the States saw or appreciated the danger. Virginia, whose representatives bore the brunt of the opposition, had a source of revenue in her western lands from which she could easily discharge her obligations, and naturally had no desire to share the liabilities of others. But her State Legislature, after Hamilton agreed with Jefferson to buy off the Virginia opposition in Congress by locating the national capital on the Potomac, protested in strong and exact terms against the State-debts-assumption proposition. These resolutions recited that the people of Virginia had adopted the Federal Constitution under the impression and upon positive condition that "every power not granted was retained," and that they had read the document in vain to find the right given to assume the debts of the States. Here, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution, was a State Legislature protesting against the usurpation of power under it. It was the first of many futile protests.