Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(58)

“A land bank?” Eliza said cautiously. “I confess I am not sure I understand the concept.”

“That makes two of us!” Alex said.

“Am I to understand,” Stephen said now, “that if I were to walk into my saddler and order a new seat for my charger—”

“Oh, to have such problems,” Helena whispered to Peggy with a silly smile on her face.

“—or a side pommel for Peggy’s palfrey—”

“Pommel,” Peggy repeated. “Peggy. Palfrey.”

“Touché,” Helena whispered.

“—instead of paying him with shillings or Continentals, I would instead reach into my pocket and hand him, what, an acre of bottomland?” Stephen chuckled. “It seems rather—how shall I put this?—inconvenient.”

Alex laughed with his brother-in-law. “Not the soil itself, of course, but a note that transfers ownership of the soil. At least as I understand it, that is the general idea. Though may I add that it sounds like a rather expensive saddle.”

“Stephen likes a posh ride,” Peggy said, popping the p. “Some of his saddles are made of leather softer than my silks. He doesn’t mind a bit of detailing either—embossed patterns and silver tips and the like. I swear, he looks positively like Don Quixote sometimes.”

Stephen blushed. “I believe Don Quixote was rather shabbily dressed. Didn’t he use a chamber pot for a helmet?”

“But that’s preposterous!” John said to Alex, except he didn’t mean the helmet. “Before you know it the land will be broken up like so many stamps torn from a postal sheet. One’s property would be scattered about like cards in the wind—like acorns fallen from an oak tree, or, or maple samaras!”

“Maple samaras,” Gouverneur repeated. “My goodness, what a literary crew you have supping at your table, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“They’re the seeds, you know,” Eliza explained, “that spin as they fall from the tree so they float farther away. Rather like Leonardo da Vinci’s aerial screw.” She felt proud of herself for pulling that one from the mists of long-ago schoolroom lessons.

“Da Vinci!” Gouverneur exclaimed. “Aerial screws! What a clever bunch you—”

“But-but-but,” John cut in, knocking on the table, “where is the land for this plan to come from? The last I checked, New York was rather spoken for. Mostly by your family,” he couldn’t help adding with a wink at Stephen.

“No doubt much of it will be seized from loyalists,” Alex answered with a frown. “But it is not clear to me that even if we cast every last supporter of the king into raw nature that we would have nearly enough capital for such a project. Land would likely be, ah, received from the great estates in New York,” he said pointedly, looking around at his guests, each of whom was connected to one or another of those great estates.

“They’ll take an acre of Rensselaerswyck over my dead body,” Stephen declared hotly.

“That would be a travesty,” Peggy said in a teasing voice. “Why, you’d only have nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine left!”

“It is the principle that matters!” Stephen said. “Is Chancellor Livingston offering parts of Livingston Manor for this criminal enterprise?”

“With only five hundred thousand to his name,” Eliza said with a smile, “he can afford to lose them even less than you!”

“He hasn’t offered anything yet,” Alex answered, “but to be fair to him, I doubt he will ever be called upon to do so, because his scheme is simply too far-fetched to catch on. Or at least I hope so,” he added, in a voice that was only half facetious.

“It sounds like you have some ideas about this, Mr. Hamilton,” Gouverneur said now. “Please, enlighten us.”

“Now you’re in for it, Mr. Morris,” Eliza warned proudly. “Mr. Hamilton loves to talk finance.”

Alex held up his glass to toast his wife. “To poor Mrs. Hamilton, who has heard me go on about this subject one too many times, I’m afraid. But the truth is, we need a bank. And not a state bank but a national one! A real bank, with deposits of gold and silver bullion in its vaults, and the ability to hand out minted coins and specie!”

(“Specie?” Peggy faux-whispered to Eliza.

“Paper money,” Eliza whispered back, as if everyone should know that.)

“A national bank implies a national government,” Gouverneur said in a dubious tone of voice.

“Which we have,” John said, though his tone was equally dubious.

Alex knew that both men were heavily connected with the powers that ran their respective states, and were likely to be skeptical of what he was about to say. Nevertheless, he was too carried away to stop.

“In a manner of speaking,” Alex said. “But a government without the power to regulate the constituent bodies over which it has jurisdiction is a government in name only.”

“A what now?” Peggy said.

“He means that the federal government cannot tell the states what to do,” Eliza said.

“Or raise an army or regulate trade or collect taxes—”

“Now, see here,” John cut in. “Didn’t we just fight a war to rid ourselves of the scourge of taxes?”