Virginia moves in a solid column, and the discipline of the party is as severe as the Prussian. Deserters are not spared. Madison is become a desperate party leader, and I am not sure of his stopping at any ordinary point of extremity. We are fighting for the assumption of the balances, which shall be declared due the creditor States. He opposes, vi et armis. The spirit of the opposition, the nature and terms of the objections, all equally indicate a fixed purpose to prevent the payment of any thing called debts. If the balances were declared to-day, the objections against providing for them are ready broached. We hear it said, let us first see how we like what the commissioners decide; let us see whether it will be proper to ratify their doings; let the debtor States pay the creditor States, &c., &c. Should our assumption fail, should the provision for the balances fail in the next Congress, or should the commissioners cut off our just dues, so as to raise suspicions of jockeying, what a ferment there will be in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and South Carolina; and the rage of these States will be turned on the government, which has pledged its faith to pay them, not on the party that causes the breach. Thus by hostility they will gain allies, and make the well-affected disaffected.
I write in confidence, for part of my remarks are of a delicate nature. You will say, I croak and am hypped. Be it so. I shall be happy to find that the grounds of my apprehensions of trouble exist only in the fumes of my brain.
. . . . . . . . .
Yours, truly.
Philadelphia, February 6, 1793.
MY DEAR SIR, --
. . . . . . . . .
On Monday the Senate negatived our assumption bill, seventeen to eleven. . . . There is no hope of doing any thing for the State debts this session, nor will the fac-
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