subject in his annual message. Appropriations for internal improvements had always been the occasion of bitter contentions in Congress. The power of the federal government to appropriate money for such purposes was, at least, ill defined, and before any general system of using even the future surplus revenue for national works should be inaugurated, it would be best so to amend the constitution as to define its powers with the utmost exactness. The Cumberland road was an instructive admonition on this point. "Year after year contests are witnessed, growing out of efforts to obtain. the necessary appropriations for completing and repairing this useful work. While one Congress may claim and exercise the power, a succeeding one may deny it; and this fluctuation of opinion must be unavoidably fatal to any scheme, which, from its extent, would promote the interests and elevate the character of the country."

This veto, the first of a long series, excited a prodigious clamor among the opposition. The opposition, however, could not command a two-thirds vote in either house. So the bill was lost. It is questionable if, from the volume of presidential messages, an argument more unanswerable can be selected than this Maysville veto message. Would that the principles it unfolds had been permanently adopted! It did vast good, however, in checking the torrent of unwise appropriation, and in throwing upon the people themselves the task of making the country more habitable and accessible.

I am sure it did not diminish the zest of General Jackson's opposition to the Kentucky turnpike to know, as he did well know, that Mr. Clay, in 1826, at the close of an afterdinner speech to some of his constituents, a speech severely denunciatory and sharply satirical of General Jackson, had given this toast: "The continuation of the turnpike road which passes through Lewisburg, and success to the cause of internal improvement, under every auspice." Nor was it it unknown to General Jackson that the managers of the road, to testify their gratitude for past services, had erected,

at a conspicuous point in the road, a momument in honor of "/ Henry Clay; which, I believe, still stands.

Three other internal improvement bills were passed during the last days of the session. Two of these the President retained until after the adjournment of Congress, which was equivalent to vetoing them. The other he disposed of in the following brief message :-"To the Senate of the United States: Gentlemen, I have considered the bill proposing to authorize a subscription of stock in the Washington Turnpike Road Company,' and now return the same to the Senate in which it originated. I am unable to approve this bill; and would respectfully refer the Senate to my Message to the House of Representatives on returning to that House the bill to authorize a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company, for a statement of my objections to the bill herewith returned. The Message bears date on the 27th instant, and a printed copy of the same is herewith transmitted."

A quiet but effective defiance. The Senate voted again upon the bill, and came within five of carrying it by the requisite two-thirds. Colonel Benton and Edward Livingston voted for it. This was the last act of the session. Congress adjourned on the thirty-first of May.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. VAN BUREN CALLS ON MRS. EATON.

THESE may seem trivial words with which to head a chapter that treats of dynasties, successions to the presidency, and other high matters. Believing, however, that the political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker, I think the heading appropriate.

General Jackson succeeded in showing that the charges against Mrs. Eaton were not supported by testimony, but he did not succeed in convincing the ladies who led the society of Washington that Mrs. Eaton was a proper person to be admitted into their circle. They would not receive her. Mrs. Calhoun would not, although she had called upon the lady soon after her marriage, in company with the Vice-President, her husband. Mrs. Berrien would not, although Mr. Berrien, ignorant, as he afterward said, of the lady's standing at the capital, had been one of the guests at her wedding. Mrs. Branch would not, although Mr. Branch had been taken into the Cabinet upon Major Eaton's suggestion. Mrs. Ingham would not, although the false gossip of the hour had not wholly spared her own fair fame. The wives of the foreign ministers would not. Mrs. Donelson, the mistress of the White House, though compelled to receive her, would not visit her. "Any thing else, uncle," said she, "I will do for you, but I can not call upon Mrs. Eaton." The General's reply, in effect, was this: "Then, go back to Tennessee, my dear." And she went to Tennessee. Her husband, who was also of the anti-Eaton party, threw up his post of private secretary, and went with her; and Mr. Nicholas P. Trist, of the State Department, was appointed private secretary in his stead. Six months after, however, by the interposition of friends, Major Donelson and his wife were induced to return and assume their former positions in the mansion of the President.

The two strongest things in the world were in collisionthe will of Andrew Jackson and the will of lovely woman; of which latter the poet saith or singeth:

"If she will, she will, you may depend on 't,

If she won't, she won't, and there's an end on 't."

Three weeks after the inauguration, when the President was in the midst of his correspondence with Dr. Ely, and when his feelings upon the subject of that correspondence

were keenest, Mr. Van Buren arrived in Washington to enter upon his duties as Secretary of State.

Mr. Van Buren was a widower. He had no daughters. Apprised of the state of things in Washington, he did what was proper, natural, and right. He called upon Mrs. Eaton -received Mrs. Eaton-made parties for Mrs. Eaton; and, on all occasions, treated Mrs. Eaton with the marked respect with which a gentleman always treats a lady whom he believes to have been the victim of unjust aspersion. A man does not get much credit for an act of virtue which is, also, of all the acts possible in his circumstances, the most politic. Many men have the weakness to refrain from doing right, because their doing so will be seen to signally promote their cherished objects. We have nothing to do with Mr. Van Buren's motives. I believe them to have been honest. I believe that he faithfully endeavored to perform the office of oil upon the troubled waters. The course he adopted was the right course, whatever may have been its motive.

The letter-writers of that day were in the habit of amusing their readers with the gossip of the capital, as letterwriters are now. But not a whisper of these scandals escaped into print until society had been rent by them into hostile "sets" for more than two years. After the explosion, one of the Washington correspondents gave an exaggerated and prejudiced, but not wholly incorrect account of certain scenes in which "Bellona" (the nickname of Mrs. Eaton) and the Secretary of State had figured. It was among the diplomatic corps, with whom Mr. Van Buren had an official as well as personal intimacy, that he strove to make converts to the Eatonian cause. It chanced that Mr. Vaughan, the British minister, and Baron Krudener, the Russian minister, were both bachelors, and both entered good-naturedly into the plans of the Secretary of State.

"A ball and supper," says the writer just referred to, "were got up by his excellency, the British minister, Mr. Vaughan, a particular friend of Mr. Van Buren. After various stratagems to keep Bellona afloat during the evening, in which

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almost every cotillon in which she made her appearance was instantly dissolved into its original elements, she was at length conducted by the British minister to the head of his table, where, in pursuance of that instinctive power of inattention to whatever it seems improper to notice, the ladies seemed not to know that she was at the table. This ball and supper were followed by another given by the Russian minister (another old bachelor). To guard against the repetition of the mortification in the spontaneous dissolution of the cotillons, and the neglect of the ladies at supper (where, you must observe, none but ladies sat down), Mr. Van Buren made a direct and earnest appeal to the lady of the minister of Holland, Mrs. Huygens, whom he entreated in her own language to consent to be introduced to the accomplished and lovely Mrs. Eaton.'

"The ball scene arrived, and Mrs. Huygens, with uncommon dignity, maintained her ground, avoiding the advances of Bellona and her associates, until supper was announced, when Mrs. Huygens was informed by Baron Krudener that Mr. Eaton would conduct her to the table. She declined and remonstrated, but in the meantime Mr. Eaton advanced to offer his arm. She at first objected, but to relieve him from his embarrassment, walked with him to the table, where she found Mrs. Eaton seated at the head, beside an empty chair for herself. Mrs. Huygens had no alternative but to become an instrument of the intrigue, or decline taking supper; she chose the latter, and taking hold of her husband's arm, withdrew from the room. This was the offense for which General Jackson afterward threatened to send her husband home.

"The next scene in the drama was a grand dinner, given in the east room of the palace, where it was arranged that Mr. Vaughan was to conduct Mrs. Eaton to the table, and place her at the side of the President, who took care, by his marked attentions, to admonish all present (about eighty, including the principal officers of the government and their ladies) that Mrs. Eaton was one of his favorites, and that