ing question. He was then within a few weeks of his thirtyfourth birth-day. He exhibited that legal research, that profound statistical and historical knowledge, that lofty and severe tone towards opponents, and we need not add, that talent which distinguished him through life. As a specimen both of the man, and of the manner of handling, on the Republican side, one of the incessant allusions of the Federalists, we select the following passages:

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"We have heard much of the policy of Washington; it has been sounded in our ears from all quarters, and an honorable gentleman from Delaware (Mr. White) has triumphantly contrasted it with that adopted by the present Administration. I ar not disposed to censure it in this case; on the contrary, I think it a high and respectable authority; but let it be properly understood in order to be rightly appreciated, and it will be found that the United States under his Administration, and that of his successor, have received injuries more deleterious, insults more atrocious, and indignities more pointed than the present, and that the pacific measure of negotiation was preferred. If our national honor has survived the severe wounds it then received, it may surely outlive the comparatively slight attack now made upon it; but if its ghost only now remains to haunt the consciences of the honorable gentlemen who were then in power, and who polluted their hands with the foul murder, let them not attempt to transfer the odium and the crime to those who had no hand in the guilty deed. The reins of Government were in their hands, and if the course they at that time pursued was diametrically opposite to that they now urge for our adoption, what shall we say of their consistency? What will they say of it themselves? What will their country say of it? Will it be believed that the tinkling sounds and professions of patriotism which have been so vehemently pressed upon us, are the emanations of sincerity, or will they be set down to the account of juggling imposture ?"

After mentioning the injuries inflicted on us by England since the treaty of peace, and among them one perhaps not generally known, that in addition to detaining the American posts, she for a time added the insult of making Niagara, in the State of New York, the seat of government for Upper Canada, Mr. Clinton continued:

"It is well known we were engaged in a bloody and expensive war with several of the Indian tribes; that two of our armies had been routed by them, and that we were finally compelled to make great efforts to turn the tide of victory. These Indians were encouraged and aided by the emissaries of Great Britain-British subjects were seen disguised fighting in their ranks, and British agents were known to furnish them with provisions and the implements of war. The Governor-General of Canada, a highly confidential and distinguished officer, delivered a speech to the seven nations of Lower Canada, exciting them to enmity against this country; but in order to furnish the savages at war with sufficient aid, a detachment of British troops penetrated into our territory, and erected a fort on the Miami River. Here

the Indians, dispersed and defeated by Wayne, took refuge, and were protected under the muzzle of British cannon. A violation of territory is one of the most flagrant injuries which can be offered to a nation, and would in most cases justify an immediate resort to arms, because, in most cases, essential to self-defence. Not content with exciting the savages of America against us, Great Britain extended her hostility to the eastern hemisphere, and let loose the barbarians of Africa upon us. A war existed at that time between Portugal and Algiers; the former blocked up the mouth of the Straits, by her superior naval force, and prevented the pirates from a communication with the Atlantic. Portugal has been for a long time subservient to the views of Great Britain; a peace was effected through the mediation of the latter; our unprotected merchantmen were then exposed without defence to the piracies of Algiers. Thus in three quarters of the globe we at one time felt the effects of British enmity. In the meantime, our commerce in every sea was exposed to her rapacity. All France was declared in a state of siege, and the conveyance of provisions expressly interdicted to neutrals. Paper blockades were substituted for actual ones, and the staple commodities of our country lay perishing in our storehouses, or were captured on the ocean, and diverted from the lawful proprietors. Our seamen were pressed wherever found; our protections were a subject of derision, and opposition to the imperious mandates of their haughty tyrants was punished by famine or by stripes, by imprisonment or by the gibbet. To complete the full measure of our wrongs, the November orders of 1793 were issued; our ships were swept from the ocean as by the operation of enchantment; hundreds of them were captured; almost all our merchants were greatly injured, and many of them reduced to extreme poverty.

"These proceedings, without even a pretext, without the forms of justice, without the semblance of equity, were calculated to inflame every American feeling, and to nerve every American arm. Negotiation was, however, pursued; an envoy extraordinary, in every sense of the word, was sent to demand redress, and a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation was formed and ratified. These events took place under the administration of Washington."1

He next described, in as animated a vein, the aggressions of France, and Mr. Adams's persisting in sending ministers until peace was secured with that power.

Wright of Maryland also pungently exposed the hypocrisy of appealing to the example of Washington for precipitating the country into war before resorting to negotiation. It would now, indeed, appear incredible that men who supported the

In a second speech, Mr. Clinton was particularly severe on Jay, speaking of his treaty as a "bad and disgraceful" one-"neither honorable nor advantageous to this country"-a "pernicious instrument" signed without "expunging one of its most degrading provisions," because "General Washington was prevailed upon by the circumstances of the times" and "elected it as only a lesser evil than war." He declared that if the contents of the treaty had been known in New York. Mr. Jay's chance of success in the Governor election "would have been forlorn," and that "at the subsequent election he was withdrawn"--that Chancellor Livingston was "as much superior to him as Hyperion to a satyr"-that "his incompetency [as Governor] became notorious," and that he was found unqualified to hold the reins of state"-that "the men of his own party knew it and lamented it," and that "he fell like Lucifer, never to rise again." The debate, strange to say, closed without any answer to this attack on Mr. Jay. VOL. III.-3

first President's foreign policy in 1794-5, should in 1803 urge avowed war measures towards Spain, which also were expected to involve a war with France, for the single act of a remote colonial officer, and before ascertaining whether his Government would either sanction or refuse to make reparation for his conduct. But it would appear still more incredible that a party thus circumstanced should voluntarily invite comparisons between their conduct on the two occasions, did we not consider men's blindness under partisan excitement, and did we not remember how sytematically Cabot's plan of impressing the name of Washington into the service of Federalism, in the face of any facts, and by mere force of reiteration, was carried out by that party.

Mr. Clinton might have instructively extended his contrast in the action of the Federalists towards foreign powers, on the different occasions mentioned, to their deportment towards our own Executive.

In 1795, they pronounced it unconstitutional and indecorous for the House to call on the Executive for diplomatic papers, to throw light on topics on which it was called upon by the Executive to legislate, after the constitutional functions of the latter in the premises were exhausted, and after the diplomatic arrangements were complete and not liable to be defeated or disturbed, so far as other powers were concerned, by making them subjects of legislative examination. In 1803, they claimed that the House could properly call for papers which were the subjects of pending and unfinished negotiation-that it could at this stage properly discuss the contents of such papers publicly, making them the topics of inflammatory denunciation against our own Executive, and of the most irritating strictures upon and menaces against the powers with whom it was negotiating-and that to deny these claims was to withhold information to which the legal rights and most important interests of the people entitled them. And these pretensions were set up by a party who had just resisted the admission of independent reporters of ordinary congressional proceedings for the use of the people!

In 1795, the Federalists considered the treaty-making power so paramount and absolute in its province, that it had not only a right to form treaties and proclaim them supreme laws of the land without interference or coöperation from, or consultation

with, the House of Representatives, but that the latter had not a particle of discretion in respect to enacting laws for their execution that it was constitutionally bound, under any circumstances, to carry out the agreements of the treaty-making power. In 1803, the same party insisted that the House could of right interfere in advance to prejudge, condemn, forestall, control or defeat the measures of the treaty-making power; and that when this action was stopped by the regular and binding decision of the legislative body, it was morally proper and decorous in members of the minority to resort to evasions, and even to irregularity to continue it, in order to inflame and exasperate the public mind against the anticipated action of the President and Senate.

It has been said that, in the policies pursued at these two epochs, the parties but changed places. This is true only to a comparatively slight extent. There is no real general analogy between the positions of the Republicans in 1795 and the Federalists in 1803-no substantial similarity in their conduct. It was the latter party alone which had completely changed its attitude.

This violent and irregular conduct of the Federalists came with less grace, too, from a party which had uniformly affected to be peculiarly and almost exclusively the conservative one of the country. It had assumed to possess nearly all the education and intelligence of the nation, and their natural concomitants. -love of order, respect for constituted authority, and disposition to preserve intact the established organs and powers of civil government. It had been one of its cardinal, avowed theories as a party, that the federal Executive should not only be retained in complete possession of all the official powers with which he was vested by the Constitution, but that in all cases where construction was resorted to, it should tend to enhance instead of diminishing his authority. It had contended this was essentially necessary to preserve national order, unity and obedience to law. It had been the constant burden of its complaints against the opposite party that its doctrines tended to opposite results.

But, as usual, the Federalists wholly overacted, and made a most bungling exhibition of ignorance and awkwardness in a new situation, when they attempted to play a popular part.

The suddenness of the change, and the nakedness of the motive, not only proved the want of sincerity, but it demonstrated even more effectually than their natural conduct, their contempt for the popular understanding and integrity. That chastity must be thought prurient which is expected to surrender at the first summons of those who have always previously exhibited aversion and That understanding and moral fidelity must be thought at a low ebb which is supposed capable of deserting old and tried friends to follow old and known opponents at the first leer of invitation.

scorn.

The Congressional representatives of those western States, for the people of which the Federalists had suddenly conceived so vehement an affection, do not appear to have been at all alarmed by the apprehension that the latter would get between them and their constituents. Led by the calm, discreet, and able Breckenridge, they stood by the Administration and awaited results. Breckenridge's motion to strike out Ross's resolutions and insert his own, passed February 25th.

Another question of this session, which called out a strong display of party feeling, rose on a memorial of the Supreme Court judges, who had been legislated out of office the preceding session. They urged that "rights secured to them by the Constitution as members of the judicial department had been impaired;" and they asked Congress to assign them their judicial duties and provide for their compensation. They offered to submit their right to the latter to judicial decision. The House decided (January 27th) by a vote of sixty-one to thirty-seven, that the prayer of the petitioners ought not to be granted; and the Senate a few days after, by a vote of fifteen to thirteen, took equivalent action.

It will be remembered that Mr. Jefferson, when Minister to France, suggested to the celebrated traveller, Ledyard, an exploration of western America. In 1792, he proposed to the American Philosophical Society to procure such an exploration, with funds raised by subscription; and it was under the auspices of this Society, and under instructions prepared by Mr. Jefferson,' that Michaux, the celebrated French traveller and botanist, proceeded on his exploration westward, until recalled by

For which see Jefferson's Works, Cong. Ed., vol. ix., p. 434.