discredit of lost causes.] The passage of assumption was the turning point. Other important measures followed, but none of them met with difficulties which the Administration could not overcome by ordinary methods of persuasion and appeal. A national bank was authorized by an act approved on February 25, 1791. Hamilton's famous report on manufactures, a masterly analysis of the sources of national wealth and of the means of improving them, was sent to Congress on December 5, 1791. Upon his recommendation Congress established the mint, the only point which excited controversy being Hamilton's proposal that the coins should be stamped with the head of the President in whose administration they were issued. This suggestion was rejected on the ground that it smacked too much of the practice of monarchies. The queer totemistic designs of American coinage are a consequence of this decision. The formation of national government by voluntary agreement is a unique event. The explanation of this peculiar result in the case of America is the unifying influence of Hamilton's measures. They interested in the support of the government economic forces strong enough to counteract the separatist tendencies that had always before broken up states unless they were held together by sheer might of power in their rulers. The means employed have been cited as evidence in support of the economic interpretation of history now in fashion. Government, it is true, like every other form of life, must meet the fundamental needs of subsistence and defense, but this truism supplies no explanation of the particular mode of doing so that may be adopted. Those needs account for motion but not for direction. Human will, discernment, and purpose enter and complicate the situation in a way that makes theories of determinism appear absurd. No one has ever contended that Hamilton was prompted by an economic motive in giving up his law practice to accept public office. He did so against the remonstrances of his friends, whose predictions that what he would get out of it for himself would be calumny, persecution, and loss of fortune, were all fully verified; but he possessed a nature which found its happiness in bringing high ideals to grand fulfillment, and in applying his powers to that object he let everything else go. Hamilton's career is one of the greatest of those facts that baffle attempts to reduce history to an exhibition of the play of economic forces. CHAPTER IV ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS