call into my aid faith, not reason, and believe when I was not convinced. I would then turn to the first magistrate of the nation and say: Did you not buy Louisiana of France? Has France acted in that transaction in a bona fide manner? Has she delivered into your possession the country you believed you had bought from her? Has she not equivocated, prevaricated, and played off Spain against you, with a view of extorting money? I will answer for the reply. There cannot be the smallest doubt about it. I will put the whole business on this issue. All the difficulty has arisen from that quarter.

66 Yes, the bubble has burst! It is immaterial to us, whether you publish the President's message or not. But it is material to others that you should; and let me add, the public will not rest satisfied with the conduct of those, who profess to wish it published, while they vote against the publication. The public will not confide in such professions. Gentlemen may show their bunch of rods, may treat them as children, and offer them sugar-plums; but all will not avail them, so long as they refuse to call for the dispatches of our ministers, and other documents, which if published would fix a stain upon some men in the government, and high in office, which all the waters in the ocean would not wash out. Gentlemen may talk about

our changing and chopping about, and all that. What is the fact? We are what we profess to be-not courtiers, but republicans, acting on the broad principles we have heretofore professed-applying the same scale with which we measured John Adams to the present administration. Do gentlemen flinch from this and pretend to be republicans? They cannot be republicans, unless they agree that it shall be measured to them as they measured to others. But we are perhaps to be told, that we all have become federalists-or that the federalists have become good republicans. This, however, is a charge which, I am convinced, the federalists will not be more anxious to repel than we to be exonerated from. No, they will never become good republicans. They never did, they never will act with us. What has happened? they are in opposition from system, and we quo ad hoc, as to this particular measure. Like men who have roughed it together, there is a kind of fellow-feeling between us. There is no doubt of it. But as to political principle, we are as much as ever opposed. There is a most excellent alkali by which to test our principles. The Yazoo business is the beginning and the

end, the alpha and omega of our alphabet. With that our differences began, and with that they will end; and I pray to God that the liberties of the people may not also end with them.

"When the veracity of a man is called in question it is a serious business. The gentleman from Massachusetts has appealed to the House for the correctness of his statement. I, too, appeal to the House whether this was not his expression, when he undertook to explain away what he had said, for he did not deny it: "That he would vouch that such were the secret wishes of the President;" and whether I did not observe that his attempt to explain was like Judge Chase attempting to draw back a prejudicated opinion in the case of Fries; that he might take back the words, but not the effect they had made on the Assembly; that the Constitution knows only of two ways by which the Executive could influence the Legislature: the one by a recommendation of such measures as he deemed expedient; the other, by a negative on our bills; and that the moment it was attempted to influence the House by whispers and private messages its independence was gone. I stated the proneness of legislative bodies to be governed by Executive influence, and, in illustration, referred to the Senate, who, from its association with the Executive and the length of time for which its members hold their seats, was necessarily made up of gaping expectants of office, and there can be no doubt of the fact. It must be so from the nature of things. Now, if it be necessary, let the House appoint a Committee of Inquiry to ascertain what the gentleman from Massachusetts did say, and let us see who can adduce the most witnesses and swear the hardest. No, the gentleman from Massachusetts had on that occasion so different a countenance, dress and address, that I could not now recognize him for the same man. He seemed thunderstruck and to be in a state of stupefaction at his indiscretion. He appeared humbled in the presence of those who heard what he had said, and beheld his countenance. His words were these, my life on it: I will vouch that such are the secret wishes of the President, or the Executive,' I do not know which."

CHAPTER XXX.

DIFFICULTIES WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

THE aggressions of Great Britain on the persons, the property, and the rights of American citizens began at an early period, and were still continued with increased aggravation. It was high time for some firm stand to be taken in regard to them. The peace, prosperity, and honor of the country demanded an effectual system of measures to arrest them. Officers of the British navy had long been in the habit of boarding American vessels, dragging seamen thence, and forcing them into their own service under the pretext that they were British subjects. The law of England did not recognize the right of expatriation. The sovereign claimed the services of all his subjects in time of war, and impressed them wherever they could be found. The similarity of language, of person, and of habits, made it difficult to distinguish an American from an English sailor. Many of the latter had taken refuge from their own hard naval service in the profitable commercial marine of the United States. In re-capturing their own subjects, they not unfrequently dragged American citizens from their homes. They were charged with not being very scrupulous in this regard. Not less than three thousand American sailors, it was said, had been forced to serve in the British navy. The government of the United States denied the right of Great Britain to impress seamen on board any of their vessels on the high seas, or within their own jurisdiction. They contended that a neutral flag on the high seas was a safeguard to those sailing under it. They were sustained in this doctrine by the law of nations.

Although Great Britain had not adopted in the same latitude with most other nations the immunities of a neutral flag, yet she did not deny the general freedom of the high seas, and of neutral vessels navigating them, with such exceptions only as are annexed to it by the law of nations. The exceptions are objects commonly denominated contraband of war; that is, enemies serving in the war, articles going into a blockaded port, and enemy's property of every kind. But nowhere, it was contended, could an exception to the freedom of the seas and of neutral flags be found that justified the taking

away of any person, not an enemy in military service, found on board a neutral vessel.

The right of impressment, growing out of their different interpretation of the law of nations, was one, and the gravest, of the subjects of dispute between the two nations. The other was in regard to the carrying trade. The question commonly presented itself in this form: Was that commerce allowable in time of war which was prohibited in time of peace? Great Britain, by her powerful marine, had swept the ocean nearly of the whole of the vessels of her enemies. In consequence of this, the produce of the colonies of France, Spain, and Holland, was imported into the mother countries by neutral ships; in fact, it was almost wholly transported in American bottoms. The restrictive colonial system of these powers did not suffer this transportation by foreigners in times of peace; but the necessities arising from a calamitous naval war induced them to lay their ports open by a forced liberality to this general commerce. French, Spanish, and Dutch property in American bottoms now became neutralized, and was protected, as some contended, by the American flag. But the property was still enemy's property, and fell within the exception of the law of nations. The French navy had been totally annihilated; in consequence, the products of her colonies had to lie rotting on their wharfs, for want of transportation, while the mother country was suffering both from the want of the products and of the revenue arising from the sale and consumption of them. These were the evils intended to be inflicted by a naval victory, in order to force her to an honorable peace. But the United States came in with their ships, and relieved France of these evils, by becoming carriers between her and her colonies.

Can that be a neutral commerce which robs one of the belligerent parties of all the advantages of a victory, and relieves the other from nearly all the evils of a defeat? It can hardly seem possible at this day that any one could have contended for such a doctrine; yet Mr. Madison maintained that the contrary principle, denying the neutral character of such a commerce, was of modern date-that it was avowed by no other nation than Great Britain, and that it was assumed by her, under the auspices of a maritime ascendency, which rendered such a principle subservient to her particular interests.

This doctrine, however, contended for by a nation that had the

power to maintain it, was gotten over by subterfuge and evasion. We will illustrate the manner by an example. A French subject purchases a cargo of coffee at Guadaloupe, intending it for the market of Nantes: to ship it in a vessel belonging to any one of the nations belligerent with England, was absolutely throwing it away; but the ordinary device of sending it under the cover of an American flag is resorted to; the American refuses to carry it directly for the harbor of Nantes, alleging, that if he is captured by an English cruiser, a condemnation must follow such an attempt at an immediate commerce between the mother country and her colony. False owners are created for the ship's cargo, in the character of Americans. The vessel instead of sailing for Nantes, makes for New York, and in due time arrives there; bonds for the payment of duties are given, and the cargo is landed. The vessel loads again with the same coffee; the debentures of the custom-house are produced; the bonds for duties are cancelled, and she now makes her way boldly for Nantes, as a neutral ship, not to be molested. The entire trade of the French, Spanish and Dutch colonies was conducted in American vessels, in this indirect way. A most profitable business it was surely, but it is shocking to contemplate the influence on the moral character of those engaged in it. All this chicanery and duplicity were often forced through by absolute perjury-always by a prostration of honorable delicacy.

The British Courts of Admiralty allowed this indirect trade through a neutral port, where there was proof of an actual change of ownership. Whenever the neutral party could show that he had purchased the property, he was suffered to pass unmolested; but such a bona fide purchase rarely took place; and enemy's property was covered up and protected by neutral names, under false pretences. Such was the carrying trade.

These two-the impressment of seamen and the carrying tradeconstituted the main difficulties existing between the United States and Great Britain; all others grew out of them, and would necessarily cease on a satisfactory adjustment of those leading subjects of complaint.

These questions were involved in much obscurity. Much might be said on both sides. Each nation had just cause of complaint against the other. Here was a fair field for negotiation and com