Hamilton refused. “Saints,” he said, might get away with such profit-making, but he knew he would be denounced by his Republican opponents as just another one of those “speculators” and “peculators.” He had to refuse “because,” as he sardonically put it, “there must be some public fools who sacrifice private to public interest at the certainty of ingratitude and obloquy—because my vanity whispers I ought to be one of those fools and ought to keep myself in a situation the best calculated to render service.”
