Washington had hoped that his Secretary of the Treasury would be Robert Morris, celebrated Philadelphia merchant and so-called "financier of the Revolution", but he declined and instead the post went to the president's young former aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton who with Washington's support and Jefferson's opposition, convinced Congress to pass a far-reaching financial program that was patterned after the system developed in England a century earlier. It funded the debts of the American Revolution, set up a national bank, and set up a system of tariffs and taxes. His policies linked the economic interests of the states, and of wealthy Americans, to the success of the national government, as well as enhancing the international financial standing of the new nation.