,
weights, and measures. In two years a mint was duly established after
an able report from Hamilton, and out of his efforts and those of
Jefferson came our decimal system. There was debate over the devices
on the coins in which the ever-vigilant Jeffersonians scented
monarchical dangers, but with this exception the country got its
uniform coinage peacefully enough. The weights and measures did not
fare so well. They obtained a long report from Jefferson, and a still
longer and more learned disquisition from John Quincy Adams thirty
years later. But that was all. We still use the rule of thumb systems
inherited from our English ancestors, and Washington's uniform
standard, except for the two reports, has gone no further than the
national university.

Another recommendation to the effect that invention ought to be
encouraged and protected bore fruit in this same year in patent and
copyright laws, which became the foundation of our present system. The
same good fortune befell the recommendation for a uniform rule for
naturalization, and the law of 1790 was quietly enacted, no one then
imagining that its alteration less than ten years later was destined
to form part of a policy which, after a fierce struggle, settled
the fate of parties and decided the control of the government. The
post-office was also commended to the care of Congress, and for that,
as for the army, provision was duly made, insufficient at the outset,
but growing steadily from this small beginning, as it was called upon
to meet the spread and increase of population.

Provision was also made gradually, and with much occasional conflict,
for a diplomatic service such as the President advised. But this was
merely the machinery to carry out our foreign policy on which, in a
few years, our political history largely turned, and which will demand
a chapter by itself.

A paragraph devoted to Indian affairs informed Congress that measures
were on foot to establish pacific relations with our savage neighbors,
but that it would be well to be prepared to use force. This brief
sentence was the beginning of an important policy, which, in its
consequences and effects, played a large part in the history of the
next eight years.

These various matters thus disposed of, there remained only the
request to the House to provide for the revenue and the public credit.
From this came Hamilton's financial policy which created parties,
and with it was interwoven in the body