The entire field of American finance is examined from its beginning.

He severely condemns the mode of assumption of the state debts in Hamilton's original plan, and no doubt his strictures are technically correct.

The debts assumed for debtor States were not due by the United States, nor was there any moral reason for their assumption.

But the assumption was sound financial policy, and all the cost to the nation was amply repaid by the order which their assumption drew out of chaos, and the vigor given to the general credit by the strengthening of that of its parts.

The course of the Federalists and Republicans on this question shows that the former had at heart the welfare of all the States, while the latter confined their interest to their own body politic.
Had Mr.Gallatin never penned another line on finance, these two remarkable papers would place him in the first rank of economists and statisticians.