those who must have documentary proof that they had "contemplated" all that had been accomplished.

The delicacy with which Mr. Livingston was treated probably saved the Administration from a serious New York feud, and the next Administration the vote of that State. It required the firm support of the Livingston family and interest to give Mr. Madison the victory he there achieved over another and Republican candidate.

Monroe had been directed, if the negotiations with France failed, to cross the Channel and make preparations for resorting to the policy which Jefferson had informed the French Government, through Dupont de Nemours, would be the alternative in the event of that failure. In the meantime, the President had held out a signal to England, in a letter which will become more noticeable in the light of some future facts. He wrote Sir John Sinclair, June 30th, 1803:

"We are still uninformed here whether you are again at war. Bonaparte has produced such a state of things in Europe as it would seem difficult for him to relinquish in any sensible degree, and equally dangerous for Great Britain to suffer to go on, especially if accompanied by maritime preparations on his part. The events which have taken place in France have lessened in the American mind the motives of interest which it felt in that revolution, and its amity towards that country now rests on its love of peace and commerce. We see, at the same time, with great concern, the position in which Great Britain is placed, and should be sincerely afflicted were any disaster to deprive mankind of the benefit of such a bulwark against the torrent which has for some time been bearing down all before it. But her power and powers at sea seem to render everything safe in the end. Peace is our passion, and the wrongs might drive us from it. We prefer trying ever other just principles, right and safety, before we would recur to war."

The last three sentences are a jumble of typographical errors. Mr. Jefferson's copy of the letter is (or should be) locked up in the State Department at Washington, and therefore we cannot correct these sentences authoritatively. They perhaps carry a sufficient inkling of the sense to render it unnecessary.

Such a letter, addressed to such a man, and containing no restrictions on the communication of its contents, was of course intended for the eye of Government. It was accordingly immediately communicated to the British Cabinet, and produced most marked and favorable changes in the relations of the two countries.

Ten days afterwards, the President wrote a letter of similar

import to the Earl of Buchan, who had previously addressed him as he had Washington; and who, as the older brother of two such men as Thomas and Henry Erskine, was probably supposed by both Presidents to be a man of consequence and sense.1

In the spring of 1803, audible murmurs were heard among the Republicans at the President's continued refusal to make a more general removal of the Federalists from office. In Pennsylvania, where a contrary rule had been practised by the State-appointing power, the dissatisfaction threatened to assume the form of a serious schism. To Mr. Nicholson, who had communicated particulars on the subject, the President wrote, May 13th, making excuses for the conduct of the malcontents, mentioning the number of removals he had made, and calmly announcing his unshaken determination to adhere to his policy. He said:

"We laid down our line of proceedings on mature inquiry and consideration in 1801, and have not departed from it. Some removals, to wit, sixteen to the end of our first session of Congress, were made on political principles alone, in very urgent cases; and we determined to make no more but for delinquency, or active and bitter opposition to the order of things which the public will had established. On this last ground nine were removed from the end of the first to the end of the second session of Congress; and one since that. So that sixteen only have been removed in the whole for political principles, that is to say, to make room for some participation for the Republicans. These were a mere fraud not suffered to go into effect. Pursuing our object of harmonizing all good people of whatever description, we shall steadily adhere to our rule, and it is with sincere pleasure I learn that it is approved by the more moderate part of our friends."

He thus gave the result of the spring elections of 1803, in a letter to Governor Claiborne (May 24):

"The elections which have taken place this spring, prove that the spirit of Republicanism bas repossessed the whole mass of our country from Connecticut southwardly and westwardly. The three New England States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut alone hold out. In these, though we have not gained the last year as much as we had expected, yet we are gaining steadily and sensibly. In Massachusetts we have gained three senators more than we had the last year,

1 This "bustling, old, intermeddling coxcomb"-this "silliest and vainest of busybodies"-as Lockhart terms him (Life of Scott, vol. iv. chap. viii.), if not something still more contemptible-as a story told of him by Allan Cunningham, in his life of the painter Barry (near the close) would lead us to suspect-was the laughingstock of his contemporaries. He appears to have been fond of patronizing American as well as domestic celebrities. The Wallace box and the consequent mention of his lordship in the will of General Washington, are familiar to our readers.

and it is believed our gain in the lower house will be in proportion. In Connecticut we have rather lost in the Legislature, but in the mass of the people, where we had, on the election of Governor the last year, but twenty-nine Republican out of every hundred votes, we this year have thirty-five out of every hundred; with the phalanx of priests and lawyers against us, Republicanism works up slowly in that quarter; but in a year or two more we shall have a majority even there. In the next House of Representatives there will be about forty-two Federal and a hundred Republican 1aembers. Be assured that, excepting in this northeastern and your southwestern corner of the Union, monarchism, which has been so falsely miscalled Federalism, is dead and buried, and no day of resurrection will ever dawn upon that; that it has retired to the two extreme and opposite angles of our land, from whence it will have ultimately and shortly to take its final flight."

The President set out for home on the 19th of August, and reached the capital again on the 25th of September.

He addressed a letter to Senator Breckenridge, August 12th, which deserves a careful perusal :

"Objections are raising to the eastward against the vast extent of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas. But, as I have said, we shall get the Floridas without, and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nation, because I see in a light very important to our peace the exclusive right to its navigation, and the admission of no nation into it, but as into the Potomac or Delaware, with our consent and under our police. These Federalists see in this acquisition the formation of a new confederacy, embracing all the waters of the Mississippi, on both sides of it, and a separation of its eastern waters from us. These combinations depend on so many circumstances which we cannot foresee, that I place little reliance on them. We have seldom seen neighborhood produce affection among nations. The reverse is almost the universal truth. Besides, if it should become the great interest of those nations to separate from this, if their happiness should depend on it so strongly as to induce them to go through that convulsion, why should the Atlantic States dread it? But especially why should we, their present inhabitants, take side in such a question? When I view the Atlantic States, procuring for those on the eastern waters of the Mississippi friendly instead of hostile neighbors on its western waters, I do not view it as an Englishman would the procuring future blessings for the French nation, with whom he has no relations of blood or affection. The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Mississippi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, and keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better. The inhabited part of Louisiana, from Point Coupée to the sea, will of course be immediately a territorial government, and soon a State. But above that, the best use we can make of the country for some time, will be to give establishments in it to the Indians on the east side of the Mississippi, in exchange for their present country, and open land offices in the last, and thus make this acquisition the means of filling up the eastern side, instead of drawing off its population. When we shall be full on this side, we

may lay off a range of States on the western bank from the head to the mouth, and so, range after range, advancing compactly as we multiply.

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This treaty must of course be laid before both houses, because both have important functions to exercise respecting it. They, I presume, will see their duty to their country in ratifying and paying for it, so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be never again in their power. But I suppose they must then appeal to the nation for an additional article to the Constitution, approving and confirming an act which the nation had not previously authorized. The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The Legislature, in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties, and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it, and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory; and saying to him when of age, I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you: you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can: I thought it my duty to risk myself for you. But we shall not be disavowed by the nation, and their act of indemnity will confirm and not weaken the Constitution, by more strongly marking out its lines.

"We have nothing later from Europe than the public papers give. I hope yourself and all the western members will make a sacred point of being at the first day of the meeting of Congress; for vestra res regitur.

"Accept my affectionate salutations and assurances of esteem and respect."

In a letter to the Attorney-General (August 30th), the President made him the bearer of his refusal to citizens of Boston to communicate his birth-day, which they had desired to ascertain for the purpose of observing it as an anniversary. He said:

"With respect to the day on which they wish to fix their anniversary, they may be told, that disapproving myself of transferring the honors and veneration for the great birthday of our Republic to any individual, or of dividing them with individuals, I have declined letting my own birthday be known, and have engaged my family not to communicate it. This has been the uniform answer to every applica tion of the kind."

Accordingly, his birthday was never publicly known until after his death.

In the same letter, he drew up something like the form of an amendment, which he wished to see made to the Constitution, to sanction retrospectively the acquisition of Louisiana on the terms of the treaty, and to cover the future annexation of Florida. But he expressed his entire views on the subject much more fully in a letter to Senator Nicholas of Virginia, as well as new reasons for the speedy action of both Houses of Congress

-the one for ratifying the treaty, the other in carrying it into effect:

DEAR SIR:

TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.

MONTICELLO, September 7, 1803.

Your favor of the 3d was delivered me at court; but we were much disappointed in not seeing you, Mr. Madison and the Governor' being here at the time. I inclose you a letter of Monroe on the subject of the late treaty. You will observe a hint in it, to do without delay what we are bound to do. There is reason, in the opinion of our ministers, to believe, that if the thing were to do over again, it could not be obtained, and that if we give the least opening, they will declare the treaty void. A warning amounting to that has been given to them, and an unusual kind of letter written by their minister to our Secretary of State direct.

Whatever Congress shall think it necessary to do, should be done with as little debate as possible, and particularly so far as respects the constitutional difficulty. I am aware of the force of the observations you make on the power given by the Constitution to Congress to admit new States into the Union, without restraining the subject to the territory then constituting the United States. But when I consider that the limits of the United States are precisely fixed by the treaty of 1783, that the Constitution expressly declares itself to be made for the United States, I cannot help believing the intention was not to permit Congress to admit into the Union new States, which should be formed out of the territory for which, and under whose authority alone, they were then acting. I do not believe it was meant that they might receive England, Ireland, Holland, etc., into it, which would be the case on your construction. When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treatymaking power as boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives. It specifies and delineates the operations permitted to the federal Government, and gives all the powers necessary to carry these into execution. Whatever of these enumerated objects is proper for a law, Congress may make the law; whatever is proper to be executed by way of a treaty, the President and Senate may enter into the treaty; whatever is to be done by a judicial sentence, the judges may pass the sentence. Nothing is more likely than that their enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us go on then perfecting it, by adding, by way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers which time and trial show are still wanting. But it has been taken too much for granted, that by this rigorous construction the treaty power would be reduced to nothing. I had occasion once to examine its effect on the French treaty, made by the old Congress, and found that out of thirty odd articles which that contained,. there were one, two, or three only which could not now be stipulated under our

John Page, Mr. Jefferson's schoolboy friend, was now Governor of Virginia.