To Alexander Hamilton from George Cabot, [4 March 1793]
From George Cabot1
[Philadelphia, March 4, 1793]
My dear Sir
The People of Massachusetts entertain the idea that a balance is due to the State more than sufficient to cover her State debt, & some anxiety has been excited in the legislature of that state lest she shou’d finally fail of receiving it. After the failure of the Assumption bill2 I intended to have had five minutes conversation with you on the subject, but saw that your time seemed to be overcharged with other business.
I hope you will find leisure & inclination to furnish me soon with your ideas on the interesting subject of commercial policy & that you will say definitively whether my continuance in the bank is to be desired or not since it furnishes so copious a topic for complaint.3 I called this morning to bid you farewell but you were absent.
May God bless you!
G Cabot
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Cabot was a member of the United States Senate from Massachusetts and a director of the Bank of the United States.
2. On December 12, 1792, the House of Representatives resolved “That a loan to the amount of the balances which, upon a final settlement of accounts, shall be found due from the United States to the individual States, be opened at the Treasury of the United States” and that “the sums to be subscribed to such loans be payable in the principal or interest of the certificates or notes issued by any such of the said States, as, upon the final settlement of accounts, shall have a balance due to them from the United States” (, 637). On January 28, 1793, the House passed a bill entitled “An act to authorize a loan in the certificates or notes of such States as shall have balances due to them, upon a final settlement of accounts with the United States” (, 683–84). On February 4, 1793, the Senate rejected the measure (, III, 638–39).
3. The “complaint” is a reference to an amendment to Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution proposed in the Senate on March 2, 1793. It was suggested that “At the end of the section, add, ‘no member of Congress shall be eligible to any office of profit under the authority of the United States, nor shall any person intrusted with the management of any bank or other moneyed corporation within the United States, be capable of a seat in either House of Congress’” (, III, 663, IV, 23, 26–31). Cabot resigned as director and sold his stock in the bank in December, 1793.