Obviously Hamilton understood the relation between the quantity of specie and the health of the domestic economy. His program was designed to bring about the inflow of such through the purchase of US debt. And it worked admirably making US debt as strong as ANY nation’s and stronger than gold itself.
His genius essentially created a money supply by capitalizing the nation’s word. Jefferson/Madison policy would have been a disaster. BUT his policy never was FOCUSED upon specie outflow and never but the policies in place elsewhere to stop it. Concern or “dire warnings” notwithstanding.
Hamilton’s goal was strengthening the Union and making possible the survival of the new nation not refutation of Adam Smith.
Hamilton undertook an extensive and in depth study of the US economy and received reports from all over the nation as a part of that, the first such attempt ever made. Of course, that data was not IN THE REPORT. What a ridiculous idea that would have been.
Treasury records doubtless suffered from having our capital in three different places AND being burned down. But the fact remains that our greatest secretary of the treasury and one of the other greatest, Hamilton and Gallatin were in charge for much of the “dark age” you referenced. It is hardly surprising or scandalous that a new nation would have gaps in its records.
Hong Kong was not a nation but was, as I said, a COLONY. Just as we had COLONIES on our doorstep which Hamilton had to consider indeed we were surrounded by them. France’s plan to send an army to Louisiana was destroyed by the yellow fever which decimated it attempting to put down the slave revolt in Haiti. It was only after that that Napoleon gave up on his intention to re-establish France’s new world empire and decided to dump Louisiana so that the US would have to fight Britain for it not France. We faced a hostile and VERY dynamic world power not like the essentially defense-minded China facing Hong Kong, which was after all Chinese territory.
Obviously Hamilton understood the relation between the quantity of specie and the health of the domestic economy.
Obviously he did not. Otherwise he would not have openly espoused policies intended to hoard specie ala mercantilism. As to the "virtue" of debt, just wondering. Have you seen where Hamilton's little "gift" stands today?
Hamilton’s goal was strengthening the Union and making possible the survival of the new nation not refutation of Adam Smith.
Except...
1. His policies did not "strengthen" the nation - they sowed the seeds of sectional discord over the tariff issue, which continued to be a source of irritation for the next 150+ years, and
2. Early drafts of the reports in Tench Coxe's papers conclusively prove that he was indeed going after Smith.
Oh, and there's also this:
3. Even if we assume Hamilton wanted to strengthen the union, protectionism doesn't work so he picked a bad policy to do it.
Hamilton undertook an extensive and in depth study of the US economy and received reports from all over the nation as a part of that, the first such attempt ever made.False. Lord Sheffield, a member of the British Parliament, published the first comprehensive report of the new United States' economy in 1784. It had more statistical data on the state of American commerce on a single attached foldout chart than all of Hamilton's data-void Treasury reports combined.
Of course, that data was not IN THE REPORT. What a ridiculous idea that would have been.Why not include it? Almost all of Hamilton's successors did. In fact, the Treasury Department has published a report on "Commerce and Navigation" detailing every last penny of every last good to clear the American border in every year from 1821 to the present. And they sent them sporadically from 1816-1820. The same type of stats were also kept by Parliament up until 1781, and then by the states that had individual state tariffs under the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789. That leaves one huge gap from 1790-1820 - the "dark age" of statistical data for the early United States. And it began under Alexander Hamilton.
Besides, if Hamilton collected all the data you claim, then WHERE THE HELL IS IT? Historians would love to get their hands on that sort of thing. And don't give me the old "they were moving capitals" excuse. Tench Coxe's rough drafts of Hamilton's rough draft of the final draft of the Reports on Credit and Manufactures survived all those moves just fine and dandy. So did all the records of Congress.
No, the real answer is we don't have complete data for those years because Hamilton never assembled it. And neither did he make any thorough and grandiose "first-ever" economic analysis of the brand new United States seeing as (1) Sheffield beat him to the punch on that by at least 6 years, and (2) if it was ever done, it is nowhere to be found in any of his published reports and no other record of it exists!
Obviously Hamilton understood the relation between the quantity of specie and the health of the domestic economy.
Obviously he did not. Otherwise he would not have openly espoused policies intended to hoard specie ala mercantilism. As to the "virtue" of debt, just wondering. Have you seen where Hamilton's little "gift" stands today?
Hamilton’s goal was strengthening the Union and making possible the survival of the new nation not refutation of Adam Smith.
Except...
1. His policies did not "strengthen" the nation - they sowed the seeds of sectional discord over the tariff issue, which continued to be a source of irritation for the next 150+ years, and
2. Early drafts of the reports in Tench Coxe's papers conclusively prove that he was indeed going after Smith.
Oh, and there's also this:
3. Even if we assume Hamilton wanted to strengthen the union, protectionism doesn't work so he picked a bad policy to do it.
Hamilton undertook an extensive and in depth study of the US economy and received reports from all over the nation as a part of that, the first such attempt ever made.
False. Lord Sheffield, a member of the British Parliament, published the first comprehensive report of the new United States' economy in 1784. It had more statistical data on the state of American commerce on a single attached foldout chart than all of Hamilton's data-void Treasury reports combined.
Of course, that data was not IN THE REPORT. What a ridiculous idea that would have been.
Why not include it? Almost all of Hamilton's successors did. In fact, the Treasury Department has published a report on "Commerce and Navigation" detailing every last penny of every last good to clear the American border in every year from 1821 to the present. And they sent them sporadically from 1816-1820. The same type of stats were also kept by Parliament up until 1781, and then by the states that had individual state tariffs under the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789. That leaves one huge gap from 1790-1820 - the "dark age" of statistical data for the early United States. And it began under Alexander Hamilton.
Besides, if Hamilton collected all the data you claim, then WHERE THE HELL IS IT? Historians would love to get their hands on that sort of thing. And don't give me the old "they were moving capitals" excuse. Tench Coxe's rough drafts of Hamilton's rough draft of the final draft of the Reports on Credit and Manufactures survived all those moves just fine and dandy. So did all the records of Congress.
No, the real answer is we don't have complete data for those years because Hamilton never assembled it. And neither did he make any thorough and grandiose "first-ever" economic analysis of the brand new United States seeing as (1) Sheffield beat him to the punch on that by at least 6 years, and (2) if it was ever done, it is nowhere to be found in any of his published reports and no other record of it exists!