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316 The rise of parties. [i 789-92 seemed scarcely worth preserving. No national currency existed ; but in its place were thirteen kinds of paper issued by the States, and reduced to token-money by the provision in the Constitution that no State should issue bills of credit or make anything else than gold and silver legal tender for debt. Trade and commerce were all but ruined. American ships and sailors were excluded from British ports in the West Indies ; American products were discriminated against abroad; and American merchants were undersold at home by foreign manufacturers. Every- where was chaos ; and out of this chaos must come order and prosperity, or the new Constitution would go down in ruin. To the duty which thus lay before it, Congress now set itself in serious earnest; and, before two years had passed, the machinery of government was well under way. Departments of State, of War, and of the Treasury were established; the Supreme, Circuit, and District Courts were created ; taxes were levied ; a census was taken ; and twelve amendments to the Constitution (of which ten were adopted) were submitted to the States. A Coinage Act was passed, and a mint set up ; the District of Columbia was defined, and the city of Washington planned; the temporary seat of government was removed from New York to Philadelphia, there to remain until 1800 ; the debts contracted by the Continental Congress and by the separate States in the long struggle for independence were funded ; a national bank was chartered ; and provision was made for the naturalisation of foreigners, the granting of patents and copyrights, the building of lighthouses, the regulation of trade and intercourse with the Indians, and for continuing the post office as already established. Most of this legislation met with little opposition ; but the funding of the Continental debt and the assumption and funding of the debts of the States, the chartering of the Bank of the United States, and the Excise Act, aroused bitter resistance in Congress and split the people into two great political parties. Those who supported the Administration and looked up to Washington and Adams, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay as leaders, became known as the Federalist party. Those who opposed the policy of the Administration and were led by Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, took the name of Federal Republicans. The Federalists were strongest in the commercial States, and the Republicans in the farming and planting regions. The Republicans complained of the high salaries paid to public officers ; believed that the national debt was unnecessarily large because the depreciated Continental paper had been funded at its face-value and not at its market price, and because the debts of the States had been assumed by the Federal government; denied that Congress had power to charter the Bank ; insisted that the Constitution should be construed strictly ; and saw in the attempt to give the President a title, and in his levees and his refusal to mingle with the people, in the secret sessions of