CHAPTER enue is raised is not important. But why all this sens VI. itiveness about revenue? Why this doubt and hesita 1794. tion? Such was not the language of America at the time of the non-importation agreement; such was not her language when independence was declared! Whence this change of American sentiment? Is America less able now than she was then? Is she less prepared for a national trial? One great change had indeed taken place in her political situation. America has now a funded debt; she had none at those glorious epochs. May not the origin of this change of sentiment be looked for in change of position? May it not be looked for in the imitative, sympathetic organization of our funding system; in the indiscriminate participation of citizens and foreigners in the emoluments of that system; in the wishes of some to assimilate the government of the United States to that of Great Britain, or, at least, their wishes for a more intimate connection with that nation? "If these causes exist, it is not difficult to find the sources of the national debility. The interests of the few who receive the public contributions are more respected than the interests of the great body of society who pay them. Instead of legislating for millions, the government is legislating for a few thousands, the sacredness of whose claims on the public treasury is the chief ob stacle to a great national exertion. "We have been admonished to banish feeling and to take counsel of judgment, but I doubt, the truth of a philosophy which advises us to banish an essential ingredient of human nature. Feeling and judgment ought to perform their respective offices: feeling should stimulate our actions; judgment should direct the wisest means. sulted. The United States have been injured and in- VI. itself ought to prescribe boldness, enterprise, energy, and CHAPTER firmness. Great Britain calculates on her influence among us, and a want of concert in our councils. Now 1794. is the time to convince the world that injury from abroad produces union at home." The speeches already given-particularly that of Giles, an excellent specimen of the sophistry in which he excelled-will serve to show the views taken on either side, and the tone and temper in which they were urged; and they merit the greater attention, as exhibiting the rea! character of the political divisions which prevailed in the United States for twenty years to come. The debate was continued with great energy, but with the suggestion of very little that was new, by Hartley, Tracy, Boudinot, Dayton, Hillhouse, Ames, Murray, Smith of Maryland, and Smith of South Carolina, against the resolutions, and by Nicholas and Madison for them. The question being taken on the first resolution-that assert- Feb. 3 ing the general policy of discriminating duties on the products of nations not in treaty with us-it was carried in committee, fifty-one to forty-six. The second resolution coming up-that enumerating Feb. 4 the specific duties to be imposed-Nicholas offered an amendment, by which they were made to apply to Great Britain alone. He scouted the idea of looking at these resolutions as a regulation of commerce. He wished to make them in form what they were intended to be in fact, a hostile movement against Great Britain. Of the debate on this amendment no report is preserved. The friends of the resolutions, doubtful, perhaps, of this new ground, voted fifty-one to forty-seven to postpone the subject for a month, to wait, as they alleged, the result of the pending negotiations as to the recent British interferences with our commerce. VI. CHAPTER So far as respects the commercial aspect of these famous resolutions, the policy proposed by them, in their 1794. domestic bearing, was very far from being original either with Jefferson or Madison. It was, in fact, the revival of an old Virginian notion, which may be traced back to very early colonial times. For more than a century before the Revolution, the exclusive control of the commerce of Virginia by English traders, the exclusive use of English manufactures, and the exclusive employment of English ships, had excited the jealousy of the colonial Legislature, and had led to a long series of acts for encouraging the building of towns, and the promotion of domestic commerce, navigation, and manufactures. Among the other expedients employed was this very levying of duties on British goods imported, and discriminating tonnage duties in favor of vessels built in Virginia. Many of these acts had never gone into effect, the British merchants having procured their disallowance by the crown. But other and more potent causes existed in the internal social system of Virginia for the failure of all these attempts to foster domestic interests. In New England and the other northern colonies a domestic commerce and navigation had sprung into existence, in spite of English competition and English legislation; and it was to the benefit of these states, and not to that of Virginia, as subsequent experience has abundantly proved, that any system of exclusion brought to bear on Great Britain was sure to redound. Of the efficacy of these commercial restrictions as a means of coercing Great Britain, Madison and his party entertained very extravagant ideas, of which they had afterward ample opportunities to be cured. What, indeed, could be more extravagant than the statement that Great Britain imported necessaries from us, and we only VI. luxuries from her, repeated over and over again by the CHAPTER representatives of a state whose chief export was tobacco, and whose imports were principally clothing, tools, and 1794 other manufactured articles of daily use and necessity? In all these commercial struggles, nothing is more certain than that the richest party can endure the longest, and is sure to triumph in the end. It was hardly, however, with any view to commerce that these resolutions had been brought forward at this moment. They must be regarded rather as a party expedient for stimulating the sentiment of hostility to Great Britain introduced by way of counterbalance to the gen cral rally in favor of the government, as against the insolence of Genet; which rally, if not counteracted, might give a decided predominance to those who favored a strict neutrality, thus strengthening the hands of Hamilton and the Federalists. Pending this debate, the president gave information to Congress that Genet's recall had been conceded. His friends, the Girondins, accused of conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the republic, had fallen from power. The control of French affairs had passed into the hands of the Jacobins, headed by Danton and Robespierre. These new administrators of the French government made no difficulty in recalling Genet; but they took advantage of this occasion to ask, in their turn, the recall of Morris, altogether too moderate in his political views, and quite too little of an enthusiast to find favor even with the Girondins, and still less so with the yet more violent party on whom the administration of affairs had now devolved. The news from France was indeed of a kind to excite painful doubts in the minds of her more thoughtful sympathizers. Hardly had the Republican Constitution CHAPTER been agreed to before it had been suspended, and a des VI. potic power assumed by the Convention-a power soon 1794. engrossed by two cominittees of that body. The leading Girondins, expelled from their seats in the Legislature, had been sent, on vague charges, to prison or the scaffold. The south and west of France had become the scene of a terrible civil war. The republic had experienced great reverses on the frontiers. The Reign of Terror had com menced. It was, perhaps, the desire to wait further information from Europe that had occasioned the debate on Madison's resolutions to be postponed. Genet did not choose to risk the danger of returning to France. He had married a daughter of Governor Clinton, of New York, and he remained thenceforth a resident of that state; but from the moment of ceasing to be French minister, he sunk at once into total obscurity. His successor, M. Fauchet, though he continued the old secretaries, and succeeded to all of Genet's intimacies, conducted with a good deal more of moderation. Though he alone had the rank of minister, he had, in fact, two colleagues, one of whom was French consul general, the other consul for Philadelphia. But, besides the official correspondence which passed under their eye, Fanchet kept up a private correspondence of his own with the French Department of Foreign Affairs. Santhonax and Polverel, the French commissioners for the island of St. Domingo, dispatched thither simultaneously with Genet's mission to the United States, after having added a civil war to the revolt of the negroes in the northern part of that colony, had ended with proclaiming the freedom of all the slaves. This was done partly, perhaps, as a retaliation on the planters, most of whom had taken sides against the commissioners, and partly as a means of saving the colony from the En |