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there will still ere long be an accumulation of moneys in the treasury beyond the installments of public debt which we are permitted by contract to pay. They can not, then, without a modification assented to by the public creditors, be applied to the extinguishment of this debt, and the complete liberation of our revenues-the most desirable of all objects; nor, if our peace continues, will they be wanting for any other existing purpose. The question, therefore, now comes forward—to what other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and the whole surplus of impost, after the entire discharge of the public debt, and during those intervals when the purposes of war shall not call for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures? On a few articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers. By these operations new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. The subject is now proposed for the consideration of Congress, because, if approved by the time the State Legislatures shall have deliberated on this extension of the federal trusts, and the laws shall be passed, and other arrangements made for their execution, the necessary funds will be on hand and without employment. I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.

"The present consideration of a national establishment for education, particularly, is rendered proper by this circumstance also, that if Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the necessary income. This foundation would have the advantage of being independent on war, which may suspend other improvements by requiring for its own purposes the resources destined for them."

After alluding to the uncertainty of our foreign relations, and their liability to change at any moment, he said:

"Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are, and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened pace in preparations for the defence of our seaport towns and waters; an early settlement of the most exposed and vulnerable parts of our country; a militia

so organized that its effective portions can be called to any point in the Union, or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient time, are means which may always be ready, yet never preying on our resources until actually called into use. They will maintain the public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of preparation. But much will depend on the promptitude with which these means can be brought into activity. If war be forced upon us, in spite of our long and vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and vigorous movements in its outset. will go far towards securing us in its course and issue, and towards throwing its burdens on those who render necessary the resort from reason to force."

The next day he informed Congress, by a special message, that the death of the British minister (Mr. Fox), charged with the duty of negotiating with us, had not interrupted the manifestation of a disposition on the part of that Government for a speedy and amicable termination of those negotiations. Under these circumstances, he recommended a further suspension of the non-importation Act of the preceding session.

Congress almost immediately (December 6th) acted on this recommendation, suspending the execution of that Act to the ensuing first of July, after voting down a proposition supported by the Federalists, Quids, and a few Republicans, that the suspension extend to December 31, 1807. Crowninshield declared, in the debate, that England had never seriously entered into negotiation with us until the passage of this Act and that but for its passage, it was his opinion she never would have entered. into such negotiation. If she found our policy wavering, she would very probably renew her depredations on our commerce, as her whole system of policy was hostile to our growing commercial greatness. This is probably to be taken as the view of the Administration.

But the President was authorized to further suspend the non-importation Act to the second Monday in December following; and on the 3d of February, 1807, the Secretary of State instructed our ministers charged with the negotiation with England, to inform that Government that the President, "trusting to the influence of mutual dispositions and interests in giving an amicable issue to the negotiation, would, if no intervening intelligence forbade, exercise the authority vested in him by the Act of continuing its suspension from the first day of July to the term limited by the Act, and which would afford to Congress, who would then be in session, the opportunity of making due provision for the case."

VOL II.-13

Burr's conspiracy soon occupied the attention of the House. About the middle of January, 1807, John Randolph introduced. a resolution for information on the subject, which passed; and on the 22d, the President replied in a message, giving an outline of the conspiracy so far as it was then known to the Government, and of the civil and military proceedings for its suppression. In regard to surmises that Burr was to receive foreign aid, the President declared they were "without proof or probability "were "to be imputed to the vauntings of the author of this enterprise, to multiply his partisans by magnifying the belief of his prospects and support." He stated that Burr appeared to have "two distinct objects, which might be carried on either jointly or separately, and either the one or the other first, as circumstances should direct." One was to separate the Union by the Alleghany Mountains-the other to attack Mexico. A third and "merely ostensible" "object was provided," namely, "the settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita, claimed by a Baron Bastrop." "This was to serve as the pretext for all his preparations, an allurement for such followers as really wished to acquire settlements in that country, and a cover under which to retreat in the event of final discomfiture of both branches of his real design." Finding himself thwarted in his first purpose, by the unshaken"attachment of the western country to the present Union," he had determined to seize on New Orleans, plunder the bank, possess himself of the military and naval stores, and proceed on his expedition to Mexico. The President believed, however, that the expedition "could not threaten serious danger to New Orleans."

Under the circumstances, the President thought Wilkinson had acted properly in sending his prisoners to Washington, "probably on the consideration that an impartial trial could not be expected during the present agitation of New Orleans, and that that city was not as yet a safe place of confinement."

Congress appear to have been more alarmed than the President, and far more alarmed by the documents that accompanied the President's message' than by the message itself. The insig

1 These were Wilkinson's affidavit of December 14th, 1806; Burr's letter to Wilkinson of July 25, 1806; Wilkinson's letters to the Government, of December 14th and 18th, 1806-the last covering Bollman's letter to Wilkinson, of September 27, 1806, and its inclosed letter in cipher from Burr.

nificance of Burr's force, when mustered at the mouth of the Cumberland, was not yet known at the capital. The members were fired by an apparent attempt, coming from the judiciary itself, to prevent the confinement of men charged with a dangerous violation of the laws. Giles, J. Q. Adams, and Smith, of Maryland, a Committee of the Senate, almost immediately reported a bill suspending the operation of the writ of habeas corpus for three months, in cases of arrest for treason, or for other acts endangering the peace or the neutrality of the United States. The usual three readings were unanimously dispensed with; and the bill unanimously passed the same day, and was sent down as a confidential proceeding to the House.

But the sudden panic subsided before action took place in the latter body, though the interval was but three days. On receiving the Senate's bill, communicated "in confidence," a motion "that the message and bill received from the Senate ought not to be kept secret, and that the doors be now opened," passedyeas one hundred and twenty-three, nays three. Eppes, the President's son-in-law, immediately moved that the bill be rejected. In his speech on the subject he said:

"Is there a man present who believes, on this statement, that the public safety requires a suspension of the habeas corpus? This Government has now been in operation thirty years; during this whole period, our political charter, whatever it may have sustained, has never been suspended. Never, under this Government, has personal liberty been held at the will of a single individual. Shall we, in the full tide of prosperity, possessed of the confidence of the nation, with a revenue of fifteen millions of dollars, and six hundred thousand freemen, able and ready to bear arms in defence of their country, believe its safety endangered by a collection of men which the militia of any one county in our country would be amply sufficient to subdue? Shall we, sir, suspend the chartered rights of the community for the suppression of a few desperadoes-of a small banditti already surrounded by your troops; pressed from above by your militia, met below by your regulars, and without a chance of escape but by abandoning their boats, and seeking safety in the woods? I consider the means at present in operation amply sufficient for the suppression of this combination. If additional means were necessary, I should be willing to vote as many additional bayonets as shall be necessary for every traitor. I cannot, however, bring myself to believe that this country is placed in such a dreadful situation as to authorize me to suspend the personal rights of the citizen, and to give him in lieu of a free Constitution the Executive will for his charter.

. . Believing that the public safety is not endangered, and that the discussion of this question is calculated to alarm the public mind at a time when no real danger exists, I shall vote for the rejection of the bill in its present stage."

In this last remark we get the reason for the very unusual

proposition to vote down summarily a bill passed by another branch of Congress, without giving it the usual reference. Eppes' motion prevailed-yeas one hundred and thirteen, nays nineteen. Only two of the leading Republicans voted in the negative, Bidwell and Varnum, both of Massachusetts. Bidwell opposed the rejection of a bill at that stage; but Varnum went further, and declared that without such a law he apprehended that it would be found impracticable to trace the conspiracy to its source, and bring the offenders to justice. His fears proved prophetic; but few probably will consider the final escape of a handful of conspirators any counterbalancing evil to that which would have inured from the establishment of such a precedent in legislation.

An incidental circumstance occurred which doubtless aided in producing that strong revulsion of feeling from the Senate's action which was exhibited in the House of Representatives. On the evening of the 22d of January, Bollman and Swartwout, sent by Wilkinson from New Orleans in military custody, reached Washington. When, on a cooler examination of the President's message of the same day, it appeared that the highest accounts did not place the main division of Burr's flotilla which had descended the Ohio at above fifteen boats, containing three hundred men-or the other branch of it, which had descended the Cumberland, at above two boats-that the Executive did not consider these "fugitives" as threatening serious danger few made proper allowances for General Wilkinson's high-handed conduct. Not taking into account the misinformation under which he had acted, many believed he had been influenced by idle terrors. Others suspected him of exaggerating all the features of the conspiracy for the purpose of acquiring the greater reputation in putting it down. And there were not wanting those who asserted that whatever there was in the plot, he had been a full accomplice in it, until he judged it safer and more profitable to turn informer.

Bollman's and Swartwout's arrival was communicated to Congress on the 26th of January; and on the 28th, a letter from the commander of Fort Massic giving information that Burr had passed that post on the 31st of the preceding month with only about ten boats manned by six hands each, and "that three boats with ammunition were said to have been arrested by the militia at Louisville." The President also stated that the militia on the

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