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This message, after a week's delay, was taken up in CHAPTER Committee of the Whole along with two resolutions offered by Blount of North Carolina, no doubt carefully 1796. prepared in conclave, and setting forth the counter-doc- April 6. trine of the majesty of the House. The first and most

important of the resolutions, after disclaiming any pretensions on the part of the House to "any agency in making treaties," yet undertook to assert "that, when a treaty stipulated regulations on any of the subjects submitted by the Constitution to the power of Congress, it must depend for its execution, as to such stipulations, on a law to be passed by Congress," as to the expediency or inexpediency of which law the House had a right to deliberate, and to pass it or not, as they might see fit. The second resolution asserted that, in applications to the executive for information, if within the range of its powers, the House was not bound to state for what purpose the information was wanted-a rather uncandid and somewhat pitiful attempt to raise a new issue, considering that Gallatin, the leader of the opposition, had expressly admitted, early in the former debate, that, had the information been wanted as ground for an impeachment, it would and should have been so stated in the call.

The task of supporting these resolutions had been assigned to Madison, who protested against any appeal, on questions of interpretation, to the proceedings of the Federal Convention. "The sense of that body could never be regarded as the oracular guide in expounding the Constitution. As the instrument came from the Convention, it was nothing more than the draft of a plan; nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people speaking through the several state Conventions which accept

CHAPTER ed and ratified it. Were we to look for the meaning VIII. of the instrument beyond its face, we must look, not 1796. to the General Convention which proposed it, but to the

state Conventions which accepted it;" and he attempted, but without much success, to gather something from the published debates of the Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina Conventions in support of his side of the question. As this whole subject had been already exhausted, no reply was made to Madison's speech, and the resolutions were adopted fifty seven to thirty-five.

Meanwhile, the treaties with the Northwestern Indians, with Algiers, and with Spain, having been unanimously ratified by the Senate, had been communicated to the House, and referred to a Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union. For several days all attempts to go into such a committee were obstinately voted down. April 13. A committee having at length been obtained, Sedgwick got the floor, and, before any of the documents referred to the committee had been read, introduced a resolution (much to the discomfiture and surprise of the opposition, who endeavored to get rid of it on points of order), that provision ought to be made by law for carrying into ef fect, with good faith, the treaties lately concluded with Algiers, Great Britain, Spain, and the Indians. It was urged in favor of taking up all the treaties together that, as they formed part of one system, if one were rejected, it might be expedient to reject the others also. After a violent and excited debate, in which much ill feeling was displayed on both sides, first, as to considering the treaties together, and then as to which should have the precedence, it was finally agreed to dispose of the other treaties before taking up that with Great Britain. While yielding this point, the Federalists consoled themselves with the idea that, if the appropriations for the

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British treaty should be voted down in the House, the CHAPTER maneuver of putting the appropriations for all the treaties into one bill might still be revived in the Senate, so that 1796. all might stand or fall together. It was suggested, indeed, that, in the last resort, the Senate might arrest the Federal City Loan Bill, then pending, a favorite measure with the South, and the Land-office Bill, a favorite of the West, might refuse to rise, might even refuse all appropriations, and in thus arresting the whole operations of government, might refer the question to the people to decide.

The resolutions as to the other treaties, after having been so modified as not to contradict the new claim of power set up by the House, passed without objection. On the resolution as to the British treaty, a two weeks' debate ensued.

So

Madison opened against the treaty in an elaborate April 15. speech, arranging his objections under three heads. far as related to the settlement of the disputes growing out of the treaty of peace, there was, he maintained, the grossest want of reciprocity. The British got all they claimed, namely, the debts due their merchants, with damages in the shape of interest. For the negroes carried off we got nothing; we obtained, indeed, the Western posts, but it was without damages for detention, and shackled with conditions respecting the Indian trade which made their possession quite nugatory as to influence over the Indians, in which alone their value consisted. The agreement to pay our claims for spoliations was no offset to the negro claim, because both were just, and both ought to be paid. The same want of reciprocity prevailed in that part of the treaty relating to neutral rights and the law of nations. We had yielded up the favorite principle that free ships make free

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CHAPTER goods; we had added naval stores, and even provisions, to the list of contraband. The concession to certain 1796. British subjects of the right to hold lands, the stipulation concerning the navigation of the Mississippi, and the inequality of opening all American ports to the British, while we were excluded from their colonial harbors, were all grounds of objection. This allowing Britain to retain her colonial monopoly was, indeed, "a phenomenon which had filled him with more surprise than he knew how to express." We had tied up our hands, too, from retaliating by giving up the right of further discrimination. This, indeed, was touching Madison in a sore spot, setting aside, as it did so long as the treaty remained in force, his favorite scheme of commercial coercion. Nor was there any reciprocity in yielding up the right of se questration, since there were no debts in England due to Americans to be sequestrated. As to our trade to Great Britain and the East Indies, we had previously enjoyed every thing stipulated by the treaty, and we should continue to enjoy it without any treaty, since it was only allowed because the interest of Great Britain required it.

The idea of war as a consequence of rejecting the treaty he thought visionary and absurd. We should not be obliged to make war on Great Britain; and for her to make war upon us, pressed as she was by France, would argue a degree of madness greater than could well be imagined.

Swanwick, the new opposition member from Philadelphia, a self-conceited fop, puffed up with sudden wealth, which the vast profits of commerce at that period had thrown into his hands, scouted all the commercial provisions of the treaty, especially those relating to the East Indies. Somewhat to the surprise of the Federalists, he was followed much in the same strain by Smith of

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Baltimore, who ended, however, with expressing an in- CHAPTER tention to vote for the treaty, because the majority of his constituents seemed to be in favor of it. Nicholas 1796. dwelt on the subject of British debts, which he swelled to the enormous amount of perhaps fifteen millions of dollars, though Jefferson, in his correspondence with the British minister (the object then being to prove that the English had suffered little or nothing), had reduced them to a mere trifle. Giles thought the provision for paying

those debts would lead to fraudulent collusions between the creditors and their debtors, and would saddle a terrible burden on the treasury. The compensation to the merchants he thought quite illusory, as every thing would depend on the chance of a favorable fifth commissioner. The sequestration article he represented as an attack upon the House of Representatives, which, just before the negotiation of the treaty, had voted to adopt a measure of that sort. He also took great offense at one of Lord Grenville's official letters to Pinckney, written before Jay's arrival, in which he had ascribed the repeal of the first provision order, in part at least, to a desire to take away all pretext from evil-disposed persons in America who seemed desirous to produce an irritation against Great Britain, and to bring the United States into the same political condition with France-a misfortune which Grenville deprecated, as well for the sake of the American people as for the common welfare and tranquillity of mankind. Taking into view the subsequent negotiation and treaty, this declaration seemed to Giles positive proof of a dangerous British influence, of which, indeed, the treaty itself afforded to his mind ample evidence. He agreed with Nicholas that the article respecting provisions was a covert attack upon France, such as would justly give her offense, amounting in subIV. P P