he put his finger on a crucial vulnerability within the new republic: the striking degree of interdependence within an economy bound together by promises that come due in an uncertain future. “As they are all engaged in commerce,” he wrote of the inhabitants of the new country, “their commercial affairs are affected by such various and complex causes that it is impossible to foresee what difficulties may arise. As they are all more or less engaged in productive industry, at the least shock given to business all private fortunes are put in jeopardy at the same time, and the State is shaken.”
