Actually Jefferson's interest was in liberty and freedom to pursue one’s own avenue to life and happiness. Hamilton's was to use the government, central banking, debt, and trade restrictions to aid some at the expense of others.
Who would think this? None other than the most well recognized economist of the time.
In 1776, Adam Smith, writing in his work ‘Wealth of Nations’ discussed comparative costs of production of various social systems. Smith insisted that,
“The mercantile system's (that system proposed by Hamilton and his party) ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade.
“It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to.”
“And among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects.”
“In the mercantile regulations,...the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.”
Northern manufacturing benefited from the system at the expense of the exporting South.
And Hamilton supported the loss of liberty of the producers of raw materials as well as the consumers to the benefit of the manufacturing owners.
"Alexander Hamilton knew that the key to a strong nation is the management and handling of debt. His work not only allowed the United States to pay off the Revolutionary War, but it set the nation on the course to prosperity never seen anywhere else on Earth at any point in history."
Pretty impressive, eh?
Hamilton--a man who argued against slavery, while Jefferson paid lip service to abolition, though supported slavery in fact and in deed. Jefferson always impressed me as the first American limousine liberal.
Hamilton was a self-made man, and believed that helping to create a dynamic economy allowed others to move up. I never got the feeling that TJ felt the same...I could be wrong.
Arguing against 'mercantilism' seems to me to be arguing against capitalism. I think that today's analogous remark would be that not taxing the rich more would 'favor' them over the rest. Bah.