certainly supposed they had guarded, as well their government against destruction by treason, as their citizens against oppression, under pretence of it; and if these ends are not attained, it is of importance to inquire by what means, more effectual, they may be secured."

The revenue maintained, he said, its flourishing condition. The receipts into the treasury had been nearly sixteen millions of dollars, which, with the five and a half millions in it, in the beginning of the year, had enabled the Government, after meeting current demands and interest, to pay more than four millions of the principal of the funded debt-all of it which was redeemable. A surplus of eight millions and a half was left in the treasury. A part of this might be devoted to commencing an accumulation to meet the installments of the public debts as they should become payable, and a part of it "towards completing the defence of the exposed points of our country, on such a scale as should be adapted to our principles and circumstances."

Bills were before long brought into Congress, appropriating six hundred thousand dollars to cover the expenses incurred by the President-eight hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars to procure additional gunboats-and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for fortifications. But decisive action was deferred to await the return of the answer to our demands on England. The vessel dispatched for that purpose did not return until the second week in December.

On the 18th of December, the President sent the following confidential message to Congress :

"The communications now made, showing the great and increasing dangers with which our vessels, our seamen, and merchandise, are threatened on the high seas and elsewhere, from the belligerent powers of Europe, and it being of great importance to keep in safety these essential resources, I deem it my duty to recom mend the subject to the consideration of Congress, who will doubtless perceive all the advantages which may be expected from an inhibition of the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United States.

"Their wisdom will also see the necessity of making every preparation for whatever events may grow out of the present crisis."

Accompanying this was a copy of the proclamation of the King of Great Britain ordering the impressment of British seamen in foreign service, and also of a new official declaration of the Emperor of France (made September 18th, 1807), of the con

struction to be put on the Berlin decree. This authorized the seizure of all English property or merchandise from England or her colonies, whoever the owner, found on board neutral vessels. The question whether the vessels bearing such property or merchandise should be confiscated, was reserved for future decision.

But there was a much more important reason for a recommendation of an immediate embargo. The British orders in council of November 11th, 1807, were known to the Government, though they had not been received in that official shape. which made it proper for the President to communicate them formally to Congress.'

A bill was passed in the Senate, on the day on which the President's message was received, laying an embargo on the sailing, unless by permission of the President, of any vessel in the ports of the United States for foreign ports, except foreign ships in ballast, or with cargoes taken on board before notification of the act; and coastwise vessels were required to give bonds to land their cargoes in the United States. The vote on

It was long and pertinaciously insisted by the opposition that the President had no information of these orders when he sent in his special message. Mr. Jefferson asserts the contrary in a letter to Madison, July 14th, 1824. Mr. Madison informed Mr. Tucker that the American Government was previously in possession of the information “through an authentic private channel," and that "it was confirmed by a ministerial English newspaper received at the same time. (Tucker's Jefferson, vol. ii. p. 249.) In a published letter to Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, dated March 31, 1808, John Quincy Adams said:

"It is true that these orders were not officially communicated with the President's message recommending the Embargo. They had not been officially received-but they were announced in several paragraphs from London and Liverpool newspapers of the 10th, 11th and 12th of November, which appeared in the National Intelligencer [of Washington City] of 18th December, the day on which the embargo message was sent to Congress. The British Government had taken care that they should not be authentically known before their time-for the very same newspapers which gave this inofficial notice of these orders, announced also the departure of Mr. Rose, upon a special mission to the United States. And we now know that of these all-devouring instruments of rapine, Mr. Rose was not even informed.

They were not merely without official authenticity. Rumors had for several weeks been in circulation derived from English prints, and from private correspondences, that such orders were to issue; and no inconsiderable pains were taken here to discredit the fact. Assurances were given that there was reason to believe no such orders to be contemplated. Suspicion was lulled by declarations equivalent nearly to a positive denial; and these opiates were continued for weeks after the Embargo was laid, until Mr. Erskine received instructions to make the official communication of the orders themselves, in their proper shape, to our Government."

The following is one of the paragraphs from the Intelligencer, alluded to by Mr. Adams: "LONDON, November 10.

"A proclamation is now, we understand, in readiness for his majesty's signature, declaring France and the whole of her vassal kingdoms in a state of siege, and prohibiting all intercourse with her or them; and all entrance of vessels into her or their harbors, except of such as have cleared last from a British port, either home or foreign."

The preceding very specific statements of Mr. Adams were published in less than four months after the date of the President's special message, and we have seen no contemporaneous efforts made to specifically meet and disprove them. We have paid the more attention to this point, because we shall presently find Mr. Canning himself tauntingly repeating the ungrounded and foolish assertion of the American opposition.

the final passage stood, yeas twenty-two; nays six. The bill passed the House three days afterwards (Monday, 21st) by a vote of eighty-two to forty-four. It was furiously opposed by the Federalists and Quids; and some firm Republicans voted with them on various grounds, which we have not space to explain.

The President, on the 23d of November, sent to.Congress a detailed account of the proceedings and testimony in the trial of Burr. On the 27th, Maclay, of Pennsylvania, moved in the Senate the appointment of a committee to inquire whether John Smith, a senator from Ohio, ought to be expelled "in consequence of the part which he took in the conspiracy of Aaron Burr against the peace and prosperity of the United States." The resolution, after some amendments which gave it a wider scope, passed without a division, and was referred to a committee of seven, of which J. Q. Adams was chairman. That gentleman made a report on the 31st, characterized by his usual vigor of thought and diction; and as the basis on which a majority of the Senate presently acted, it would be omitting a forcible indication of public sentiment in the highest places, not to present glimpses of this able paper. The following are some of its passages:

"It [the Constitution] has not subjected him [Senator Smith] to removal by impeachment; and when the darling of the people's choice has become their deadliest foe, can it enter the imagination of a reasonable man that the sanctuary of their legislation must remain polluted with his presence, until a court of common law, with its pace of snail, can ascertain whether his crime was committed on the right or on the left bank of a river; whether a puncture of difference can be found between the words of the charge and the words of the proof; whether the witnesses of his guilt should or should not be heard by his jury; and whether he was punishable, because present at an overt act, or intangible to public justice, because he only contrived and prepared it? Is it conceivable that a traitor to that country which has loaded him with favors, guilty to the common understanding of all mankind, should be suffered to return unquestioned to that post of honor and confidence, where, in the zenith of his good fame, he had been placed by the esteem of his countrymen, and in defiance of their wishes, in mockery of their fears, surrounded by the public indignation, but inaccessible to its bolt, pursue the purposes of treason in the heart of the national councils? Must the assembled rulers of the land listen with calmness and indifference, session after session, to the voice of notorious infamy, until the sluggard step of municipal justice can overtake his enormities? Must they tamely see the lives and fortunes of millions, the safety of present and

The nays were Crawford, Goodrich, Hillhouse, Maclay, Pickering and White. Of the Federal senators, Mr. Adams voted for the bill, and Mr. Bayard was absent.

future ages, depending upon his vote, recorded with theirs, merely because the absurd benignity of general maxims may have remitted to him the forfeiture of his life?

"From the volume of printed evidence communicated by the President of the United States to Congress, relating to the trial of Aaron Burr, it appears that a great part of the testimony which was essential to his conviction upon the indictment for treason, was withheld from the jury upon an opinion of the Court, that Aaron Burr, not having been present at the overt act of treason alleged in the indictment, no testimony relative to his conduct or declarations elsewhere, and subsequent to the transactions on Blennerhassett's Island could be admitted. And in consequence of this suppression of evidence, the traverse jury found a verdict, 'That Aaron Burr was not proved to be guilty, under that indictment, by any evidence submitted to them.' It was also an opinion of the Court, that none of the transactions, of which evidence was given on the trial of Aaron Burr, did amount to an overt act of levying war, and, of course, that they did not amount to treason. These decisions, forming the basis of the issue upon the trials of Burr, anticipated the event which must have awaited the trials of the bills against Mr. Smith, who, from the circumstances of his case, must have been entitled to the benefit of their application; they were the sole inducements upon which the counsel for the United States abandoned the prosecution against him.

"Your committee are not disposed now to question the correctness of these decisions on a case of treason before a court of criminal jurisdiction. But whether the transactions proved against Aaron Burr did or did not amount, in technical language, to an overt act of levying war, your committee have not a scruple of doubt on their minds, that, but for the vigilance and energy of the Government, and of faithful citizens under its directions, in arresting their progress and in crushing his designs, they would, in a very short lapse of time, have terminated not only in a war, but in a war of the most horrible description, in a war at once foreign and domestic. As little hesitation have your committee in saying, that if the daylight of evidence, combining one vast complicated intention, with overt acts innumerable, be not excluded from the mind by the curtain of artificial rules, the simplest understanding cannot but see what the subtlest understanding cannot disguise, crimes before which ordinary treason whitens into virtue-crimes of which war is the mildest feature. The debauchment of our army, the plunder and devastation of our own and foreign territories, the dissolution of our national Union, and the root of interminable civil war, were but the means of individual aggrandizement, the steps to projected usurpation. If the ingenuity of a demon were tasked to weave, into one composition, all the great moral and political evils which could be inflicted upon the people of these States, it could produce nothing more than a texture of war, dismemberment, and despotism."

The report concluded with a resolution that Smith be expelled for his "participation in the conspiracy of Aaron Burr against the peace, union, and liberty' of the people of the United States."

Hillhouse moved that Smith be heard by counsel not ex

1 These words are italicized in the report.

ceeding two. Adams opposed this, and Hillhouse and Bayard replied. The latter, among other things, said:

"I do not consider the question to be, whether there was a conspiracy of which Burr was the author? That such a conspiracy did exist, I firmly believe; and I further believe that scarcely a man in the United States doubts it. Nor is it the question, whether the course pursued against Burr has been as discreet as it might have been, or whether certain alleged subtleties ought to have been discarded by the courts of law. The only question is, whether John Smith did participate in this conspiracy? If he did, even in the smallest criminal degree, I shall have no hesitation in giving my vote for his expulsion."

Smith was finally heard by counsel, and testimony, oral and written, was submitted. The final question was not reached until April 9th, when the vote stood for expulsion nineteen, against it ten. Two-thirds not voting in the affirmative, the resolution failed. Smith held his seat during the session, and then resigned.

If other Federal senators did not as frankly as Adams and Bayard announce their convictions of Burr's guilt, we think no one avowed an opposite conclusion-or pronounced the President a tyrant for crushing the conspiracy-or intimated that he had consciously sought the conviction of an innocent man. As already remarked, the national feeling had been too seriously and audibly expressed to invite any repetition of the former ambitious demonstrations of sympathy for the accused.

The vote on Smith's expulsion does not appear to have been strictly a party division-though most of the Republicans voted for, and most of the Federalists against it. There were those in each party who believed Smith had been wheedled into Burr's enterprise without understanding its character. Among these was Giles, of Virginia, one of the most decided administration members; and he both spoke and voted against the resolution. His vote, given the other way, would have changed the result.

Further manifestations of deep feeling in Congress in regard to the manner in which Burr's case had been disposed of, were not wanting. Giles introduced a bill in the Senate, February 11th, for the punishment of treason and other offences, in which several new and stringent clauses were introduced, and the aiding or assisting in doing certain traitorous acts by any one, "though not personally present when any such act was done or