I don’t know who he corresponded with, but I know he read both Adam Smith and David Hume, who are still known today, He also read Malachy Postlethwayt’s “Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce”, which is less known today, but was enormously influential at the time, and who’s ideas were influential in the administrations of Walpole and Lord Rockingham (Postlethwayt’s advice was the main reason the Rockingham government repealed the Stamp Tax.)
Hamilton’s biggest influence though, economically, was probably Jaques Necker, Louis XVI’s finance minister, whose advice to reform the French system of taxation and expenditure and decrease state spending Louis disregarded.
I do have to say, reading the debate thus far, that I think both you and Brainglutton are being unfair. Both Hamilton and Jefferson were extraordinarily intelligent and educated men, who had read extensively on matters of government and economy, and both well in tune with the economic thinking of the time. I understand partisanship exists, but it seems wrong to dismiss either one as a crank, as foolish, or as venal.
I guess we’re not so much debating about the relative values of the two men, as about the relative values of the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian traditions in American political economy.
And practically any thinking person of the 18th Century will appear a crank in some respects to modern minds.
I wonder if that was a satire considering its pretty absurd to call Swedes and Germans “swarthy” while English are not. Plus the reference to Martians and Venerians.
I really don’t think it was, since it’s connected to his hostility to German immigration, which is not satire but his actual policy, or at least I’ve never read otherwise. Also:
So, it was something to which he paid attention.
I’m not sure what “surface vascularity” means, though.