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CHAPTER had been nearly completed, and of other taxes which XIII. must be imposed? This standing on the defensive was 1799. an expensive business. There was now no resource of

bills of credit, as at the commencement of the Revolution; and to raise the five million loan it had been necessary to promise an interest of eight per cent. The costly naval and military establishments already on foot, and which it was proposed to enlarge, would require a great deal more of money; and Adams could foresee as well as Jefferson how this increase of expenses and taxes was likely to operate on public opinion. The zeal and enthusiasm kindled by the publication of the X, Y, Z dispatches was already subsiding. The opposition, though cowed and weakened, was by no means discouraged. The late nullifying resolutions of Kentucky and Virginia showed the extent to which the leaders in those states and their prompters behind the scene were ready to go. It was even threatened to introduce bills into the Virginia Assembly, such as the spirit of their resolutions demanded, nullifying the Alien and Sedition Laws, and authorizing resistance to them by the force of the state, and to that end to reorganize the militia.

It was plain, from Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, to what a romantic pitch the military ardor of the French was carried. Should they attempt an expedition to America, against which the present naval predominance of England seemed the only security, who could tell what the result might be? Was it perfectly certain that the many devoted partisans of the French-was it certain that such men as Giles and Monroe, Gallatin and Burr, even Jefferson himself, might not look on a French army more as liberators than as enemies, whose aid might lawfully be employed to put down a government denounced by Jefferson as having become more ar

bitrary and more dangerous to liberty than even that of CHAPTER England? Even if this foreign force were not availed

XIII.

of to overturn at once the government and the Constitu- 1799. tion, it might still be employed to transfer the administration of it into new and so-called Republican hands; and the saving the country from the dangers of monarchy and British alliance might seem to a large faction to justify the risk of a subserviency to France, as pitiful and helpless as that of the Batavian republic, whose inscriptions Talleyrand had offered to the American en

voys.

What might have added to the weight of these considerations was a letter which Adams had lately receiv ed from Washington, inclosing one from Barlow to himself of very nearly the same date (October 2, 1798), with Talleyrand's second letter to Pichon. In terms more decent and respectful toward his country than he had of late been accustomed to use, taking for his text the appointment of Washington as commander-in-chief of the American armies, Barlow attempted to represent the present difficulties between France and the United States as growing out of a misunderstanding of each other's intentions. He insisted with emphasis on the desire of France for peace, as evinced not only by acts already done, but by intentions alleged by Barlow to be known to himself; and he ended with suggesting the appointment of another minister by the United States, as, under the circumstances, not inconsistent with the national honor.

In transmitting to the president this letter, which Feb. 1. Washington did immediately on receipt of it, he remarked that this was the only communication he had ever received from the writer, and that it must have been made either with a very good or a very bad design, the president could best judge which. "From the known

CHAPTER abilities of that gentleman, such a letter could not be the XIII. result of ignorance in him, nor, from the implications 1799. which are to be found in it, has it been written without the privity of the French Directory." "Should you be of opinion that his letter is calculated to bring on negotiations upon open, fair, and honorable grounds, and to merit a reply, and will instruct me as to the tenor of it, I shall, with pleasure and alacrity, obey your orders, more especially if there is reason to believe that it would become a means, however small, of restoring peace and tranquillity to the United States upon just, honorable, and dignified terms, which I am persuaded is the ardent desire of all the friends of this rising empire."

But, however strong might be the motives prompting to Murray's nomination, there was one remarkable circumstance about it which exposed the president subsequently to many injurious suspicions and imputations. With that strong self-reliance and readiness to assume responsibility for which he was distinguished, and resolved to vindicate his personal prerogative as president even at the hazard of giving great dissatisfaction to many of the leading men who supported him, he made the nomination, not only without any consultation with his cabinet, and against what he knew to be the opinions of a majority of its members as well as of many leading Federalists out of doors, but without any forewarning to any body of what he intended; and from this moment a breach commenced between him and a section of the Federalists, which rapidly became complete and final. His reason for anticipating by action any knowledge of his intention was, his certainty of the decided opposition of his cabinet to the course which he was just as decidedly determined to take, and his wish to escape, as to this matter, what Fisher Ames had noted as a peculiar

XIII.

ity of our government, that other governments found op- CHAPTER position after their measures were taken, ours in their very inception and commencement. The same policy, 1799. adopted by Adams on this occasion, of anticipating opposition by surprise, was afterward imitated in the cases. of the embargo, the war with Great Britain, and the Mexican war, instances quite sufficient to raise the gravest doubts as to its propriety. There was this difference, however, between the cases, that Adams's surprise was upon his own counselors and leading partisans, while the surprise in the other cases was upon the opposition and the body of the people.

The nomination of Murray being referred by the Senate to a committee, of which Sedgwick was chairman, that committee took the unusual, and, as Adams esteemed it, unconstitutional course of attempting to persuade him to withdraw the nomination. Out of doors, also, a loud clamor was raised (the fact of the nomination having at once leaked out), the louder because, Talleyrand's letter to Pichon not being yet published, the public had no means whatever of perceiving that any change of cir cumstances had occurred since the president had declared in his speech at the opening of the session, but a few weeks before, that to send another minister to France without more determinate assurances that he would be received would be an act of humiliation to which the United States ought not to submit.

Though Adams refused to withdraw the nomination, yet, in consequence of the representations of the committee, and their expressed intention to report against Feb. 25. confirming it, he sent another message, nominating Chiefjustice Ellsworth and Patrick Henry, jointly with Murray, envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary to the French republic, the two former not to embark for

CHAPTER France until authentic and satisfactory assurances should be received as to their reception.

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1799.

Thus modified, the nomination was confirmed, sorely against the inclination of a number of the Federal senators. But to reject it was a responsibility which they had not the courage to assume, leading, as it certainly would, to an immediate break-up of the Federal party.

In consequence of suggestions from the Russian minister at London to the American minister there, the president had previously nominated, and the Senate had confirmed, King, the minister at the British court, to negotiate at London a treaty of commerce with Russia, and Smith, the minister at Lisbon, to form a similar treaty with the Turks, both of those nations being now at war with France. But these negotiations were not pushed to any result. A consul general-a sort of embassador to Toussaint-was also appointed for the island of St. Domingo, the French part of which was now wholly under the dominion of that famous negro chief.

The age and increasing infirmities of Henry obliged him to decline the appointment of embassador to France. This he did in a letter, declaring that nothing short of absolute necessity could have induced him to withhold his little aid from "an administration deserving of gratitude and reverence for abilities and virtue." General Davie, who had been chosen, a few months before, gov ernor of North Carolina, was appointed in his place.

Jefferson meanwhile continued to labor for the overthrow of the administration with that same persevering, unhesitating zeal which had prompted the nullifying res olutions of Kentucky and Virginia. But as in that matter, so now, according to his usual custom, he carefully avoided any exposure of himself, by any public use of his tongue or pen, to the dreaded quills of Porcupine and

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