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cence of departed greatness come upon him, exclaim with the same fallen statesman,

"There was the weight that pulled me down ;

O Cromwell,

The King has gone beyond me, all my glories
In that one woman I have lost forever."

How admirable was this conversion of Mr. Ingham! No feat performed by the General was more meritorious, none more difficult, when it is considered that, the besetting sin of the convert was lust of office, and to the gratification of which, he had devoted the full half of his life. The malicious, however, may say, that even in the confession there are symptoms that the conversion is neither full nor permanent, and may recur to the distich;

"The Devil was sick, the Devil a Saint would be,
The Devil got well, the Devil a Saint was he."

But if there be circumstances throwing doubt over the sincerity of the conversion, Mr. Ingham is entitled to the benefit of his refusal of the prostituted mission to Russia.

We have dwelt upon the case of Mr. Ingham, because he was the most conspicuous actor among the aggrieved of the deranged Cabinet. We must not, however, dismiss it without adverting to the personal violence with which he was threatened, by the ex-Secretary of War, which put in jeopardy his life, and in which, he accused the President of the United States of being an accessary.

To the citizens of the United States, the whole subject is a painful one. They have beheld the administration rent asunder by the fierce contentions of their public servants, in attempts to prostitute their stations, which should be used for the public weal, to the promotion of their private interests, and the affairs of the nation involved in scandalous discussions of a lady's reputation. They have been mortified in beholding their First Magistrate descending into the coteries of female scandal, and, attempting to sustain, by the weight of political authority, one whom the society of the metropolis was supposed to reject; displaying a want of consideration for his character and station, and a disposition, imperiously and unwarrantably, to control those whom he held dependent upon him in the private and most sacred concerns of their domi

cils, a stretch of power, paralleled only in the most absolute despotism, or in the corruption of a superannuated monarchy.

271. Happily for Mr. Barry, the abuses in his office, had brought his conduct under the examination of the Senate; and though it is understood, that, he also tendered his commission, it was refused, for the very proper reason, that his retirement at this juncture, might be deemed a confession of malversation, and for the no less cogent reason, that, his efficiency as a party agent could not be readily supplied. This sole fraction of the Union Cabinet was preserved to become the leaven of future batches.

272. The second Cabinet of General Jackson consisted of Mr. Livingston, Secretary of State; Mr. McLane, Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Cass, Secretary of War; Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of the Navy; and Mr. Taney, Attorney General.

CHAPTER XI.

ABASEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

273. Although Mr. Van Buren, like the other ministers, had retired, there was a broad difference between his case and theirs; his was "reculer pour sauter," receding that he might, more surely, make the higher leap; whilst theirs, was, "a farewell, a long farewell to all their greatness." In the reply, which he prepared for the President, to his letter of resignation, he took special care to announce his purpose of being again employed. The President is made to say, "I part with you, only, because you yourself have requested me to do so, and have sustained that request by reasons strong enough to command my assent. I cannot, however, allow the separation to take place, without expressing the hope, that this retirement from public affairs, is but temporary; and that, if, in any other station, the Government should have occasion for your services, the value of which has been so sensibly felt by me, your consent will not be wanting."

274. That letter of resignation, too, has a very remarkable feature, commencing a change in the practice of office-seeking. In some portions of the country, aspirants to the offices of sheriff, county commissioner and constable, are in the practice of, publicly and personally, soliciting popular suffrage; in others, it is not holden dishonorable to candidates for seats in the State Legislatures and Congress, to make public declarations, of their wishes, and a display of their qualifications. We have not heard of an instance in which this practice has extended to the office of Governor; and as for the Presidency, it has, upon all hands, been deemed an office of too great dignity to be solicited or refused. Mr. Van Buren has contrived, however, in his correspondence with the President, upon this occasion, not only, to put himself in nomination for the office of President, but to obtain the President's sanction for his course, and to put himself before the people as the appointee of General Jackson.

"From the moment," says Mr. Van Buren, in his letter, "of taking my seat in your Cabinet, it has been my anxious wish and zealous endeavour to prevent a premature agitation of the question of your successor; and, at all events, to dis

countenance, and if possible, to repress, the disposition at an early day, manifested, to connect my name with that disturbing topic. Of the sincerity and constancy of this disposition, no one has had a better opportunity to judge than yourself. It has, however, been unavailing. Circumstances, not of my creation, and altogether beyond my control, have given to this subject a turn, which cannot now be remedied, except by a self-disfranchisement, which, even, if dictated by my individual wishes, could hardly be reconcilable with propriety or self-respect." To this reason, General Jackson, as we have seen, is made to give his assent, and thereby to approve this self-nomination of Mr. Van Buren for his successor. cannot be mistaken in this construction of the correspondence, since it is supported by the unbroken tenor of subsequent

events.

We

275. The hope expressed by the President, that Mr. Van Buren would consent to serve in other stations in public affairs, was founded on the foregone conclusion that he should fill the office of minister to the Court of St. James, it being resolved before his resignation, that he should succeed Mr. M'Lane in that office, and that the latter should become the Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Mr. Ingham. To this office, Mr. Van Buren was accordingly appointed; and in the course of the summer of 1831, departed for Europe.

276. Upon the meeting of Congress, in December, Mr. Van Buren was nominated, with other high officers, to the Senate of the United States, for their approbation. An opportunity was thus given to that body to consider and express its opinion upon the conduct of Mr. Van Buren, in his late office of Secretary of State, and particularly in connection with the convention with Great Britain, in relation to our trade with her colonies; in which, he was chargeable with having abased his country, by humiliating and ignominious solicitation for favours, which should have been demanded as rights, by an aspersion of the integrity and capacity of the (late) administration of his own country, and by the intrusion of our party differences into our diplomatic correspondence. Hitherto, whatever party bickerings we may have had at home, we had, invariably, presented to foreign powers, but one front, in our official communications with them. No American administration had, ever before, in its diplomacy, debased the national dignity by the indulgence of party malevolence. In order to understand, fully, this offence, charged upon Mr. Van Buren and upon the Jackson administration, it

becomes necessary to state, concisely, the question at issue between the United States and Great Britain. This is necessary, also, in another point of view; that we may determine upon the merit claimed by that administration in the negotiation, and its results, which were boasted, without cause, to be highly advantageous to the country, and to have been, wantonly and unwisely, disregarded, by the preceding administration.

277. It has been long the policy of the United States, to establish, in her commercial relations with foreign states, the principle of entire reciprocity. To this end, we have offered, by our acts of Congress, that, if any nation will admit our vessels into her ports without discriminating duties, we will, forthwith, admit her vessels upon the like terms. Several nations have acceded to this offer, and the principle has been incorporated into several treaties.

278. England refused to agree to terms so equal, until, in the year 1815, she was forced to adopt them; Mr. Huskisson, her minister, observing, that "after a long struggle to counteract the navigation system of America, without in any degree, relaxing our own, Great Britain found it necessary to adopt the system of reciprocity." But she, expressly, excepted her West India Islands from the operation of this principle; long varying her contrivances, with the sole view of keeping the trade with those islands in the hands of British ship owners.

279. A contest for this trade had grown up, in the earliest stage of our political existence-not that, we should force, upon the British Islands, our produce, for their geographical position climate and artificial institutions rendered it indispensable to them, so indispensable, that to admit it, their ports were opened, even during the late war with us. But the contest was for the carrying trade-for the right of transporting our produce in our own ships. It was commenced, immediately, after the acknowledgment of our independence, and was animadverted upon, in the Continental Congress, of 1784, as a cause of conferring additional powers upon the Confederation, in order to maintain it on our part with success. In the first Congress, 1789, Mr. Madison declared, that he would meet interdict with interdict, "until we should be allowed to carry to the West India Islands, in our own vessels, the produce of America, which necessity compels them to take." And President Washington, in his instructions to Mr. Morris, in the same year, says, emphati

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