Note 8 — A SKETCH OF HAYM SALOMON.

Under date of August 27, 1782, Mr. Madison wrote from Philadelphia to Edmund Randolph: "I cannot in any way make you more sensible of the importance of your kind attention to pecuniary remittances for me than by informing you that I have for some time been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon, a Jew Broker." See Gilpin, Madison Papers, I., 163. During the following month Mr. Madison's position seems to have grown more aggravated, for, on September 24, he declared: "I am relapsing fast into distress. The case of my brethren is equally alarming." Ibid, p. 176. Assistance in sufficient amount was still not forthcoming, and a week later, September 30, 1782, he acknowledged to Mr. Randolph the local source of his benefactions as follows: "I am almost ashamed to acknowledge my wants so incessantly to you, but they begin to be so urgent that it is impossible to suppress them. The kindness of our little friend in Front street, near the coffee-house, is a fund that will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great mortification, as he obstinately rejects all recompense. The price of money is so usurious that he thinks it ought to be extorted from none but those who aim at profitable speculations. To a necessitous delegate, he gratuitously spares a supply out of his private stock." Ibid, pp. 178-179.

There seems little doubt but that the "little friend in Front street" is meant to indicate Haym Salomon. This view is taken by the Congressional committees and by Madison's biographer; see Gay, Life of James Madison, p. 25. The fact that the first Philadelphia City Directory was issued in 1785, and that Haym Salomon died on January 6 of that year (vide infra), renders direct verification impracticable. Search among the Philadelphia newspapers of the period would probably determine the point once for all.