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CHAPTER ed indulgence of their own fierce passions and hatreds Many were persons of considerable literary qualifications; 1798. indeed, several of them had fled, like Callender, to escape punishment for alleged seditious libels against the British government. Having been journalists or pamphleteers at home, they found employment here in that capacity, and a very large proportion of the journals in the Middle and Southern States were edited by persons of this description. In admiration for France and hatred of Great Britain, they strongly sympathized with the ultra Democratic party, whose passions their writings contributed not a little to embitter and inflame; and having obtained by naturalization the rights of citizenship, they led off among the fiercest opponents of the national administration, all as voters, and some as candidates. No objection was made by any body to the enjoyment by foreigners of all rights except political ones; but the government of the country, it was thought by many, ought to be in the hands of the native citizens. Harper wished to provide that none except natives should enjoy the rights of citizenship. Otis suggested that the object in view might be sufficiently obtained by depriving naturalized citizens of the right to hold office. But to both these propositions the decisive objection was made, that the naturalization of foreigners and their holding office were things contemplated in and provided for by the Federal Constitution, so that nothing remained ex cept to diminish the facility with which immigrants from abroad might obtain the character of citizens.

In addition to restraints upon the facility of naturalization, it was also thought necessary, as a part of the system of defense then under consideration, to vest a power somewhere to send out of the country such foreign residents as might reasonably be suspected of co-opera

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1798.

ting with external enemies. Alarm on this score was CHAPTER by no means entirely groundless. Talleyrand was believed to have acted during the latter part of his residence in the United States as a spy for the French government, and others of the exiled French were objects of a similar suspicion. The late attempts to set on foot French expeditions in Georgia and the West were not forgotten. Davis, the representative from Kentucky, stated that the commissions issued on that occasion were yet in existence, and that a certain Frenchman, resident in Kentucky, through whose hands they had passed, was still very busy in alienating the affection of the people from the United States. Indeed, it was strongly suspected, and probably not without reason, that Volney had not been engaged in exploring the Western country solely with scientific views. Like Micheaux, the botanist, a few years before, he had, perhaps, been employed as a French government agent to obtain information; and possibly too in forming connections of which advantage might be taken in case of a rupture with the United States, to procure a dismemberment from the Union of the trans-Alleghany settlements, and their junction with Louisiana, which it was believed that France already had or soon would re-acquire. Along with the late wide additions to her European borders, might not France wish again to re-establish her American empire? thus finally carrying out those projects of French dominion in America indulged in for a century or more preceding the treaty of 1763, but of which the fortune of war had compelled an abandonment.

On this subject of aliens three bills were passed. The first was an amendment of the Naturalization Act, extending the necessary previous residence to fourteen years, and requiring five years previous declaration of intention

CHAPTER to become a citizen, instead of the former and present XII. requirements of five years in the one case and three 1798. years in the other. Alien enemies could not become

citizens at all. A register was to be kept of all aliens resident in the country, who were to report themselves under certain penalties; and in case of application to be naturalized, the certificate of an entry in this register was to be the only proof of residence whenever that residence commenced after the date of this act.

A second act, of which the continuance was limited to two years, gave the president authority to order out of the country all such aliens as he might judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or suspect to be concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations.

By a third act, in case of war declared, or an invasion of the United States, all resident aliens, natives or citizens of the hostile nation, might, upon a proclamation to that effect, to be issued at the president's discretion, be apprehended and secured, or removed.

To the first and third of these acts no concerted opposition seems to have been made. The second, which became familiarly known as the Alien Act, was vigorously opposed as an unconstitutional interference with the right secured to the existing states to admit, prior to 1808, the importation or emigration of any such persons as they might think proper; and also as an unconstitutional interference with the right of trial by jury. But, notwithstanding this opposition, the bill passed the House forty-six to forty.

Neither this act nor the other respecting alien enemies was ever actually carried into effect, the president seeing no occasion to exercise the discretion intrusted to him. But several Frenchmen took the hint, Volney among the

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rest, and two or three ship-loads of them speedily left CHAPTER the country.

Before the final passage of either of these acts, another 1798. step had been taken toward an open rupture by an act. June 12. suspending all commercial intercourse with France and

her dependencies.

He

Simultaneously with the passage of this act, Marshall June 16. landed at New York on his return from France. proceeded at once to Philadelphia, where he was received with great eclât. The Secretary of State and many private carriages, escorted by the city cavalry, went out to meet him. On his reaching the city, the bells rang, and an immense procession collected to escort him through the streets. Shortly after, he was entertained by the Federal members of Congress at a public dinner. A message June 21. from the president communicated to Congress the return of Marshall, also Talleyrand's letter to Gerry requesting him to renew the negotiation, Gerry's refusal to do so, his official letter to the State Department, stating his intention to remain at Paris, and the letters of recall instantly dispatched to him; and it concluded with the following emphatic declaration: "I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, independent, and powerful nation."

By a usage, now introduced for the first time, ten thousand extra copies of these dispatches, and of the papers before communicated, including the instructions to the ministers and their whole correspondence, were ordered to be printed for distribution among the people. For this innovation there was, however, a particular reason. Talleyrand's letter to the envoys, in reply to their long memorial on the wrongs of the United States-that letter in which he assumed for France the place of the

CHAPTER injured party, and offered to treat with that one of the XII. envoys supposed to be most favorable to the French re1798. public-had been transmitted to the United States, and

had actually appeared in print in Bache's Aurora before a copy of it or of the envoys' reply to it had been received by the American government. The publication in America of the previous dispatches, giving an account of the unofficial intercourse with Talleyrand's private agents, Hottinguer and Bellamy, seems not to have been at all anticipated in France; and the project in forwarding Talleyrand's letter to the Aurora evidently was to preoccupy the public ear by an appeal to the American people, in continuation of those already made by Genet and Adet, and in Monroe's lately published book, against the obstinacy, ingratitude, and hostility toward France of the American government, and of two, at least, of the three envoys.

In the publication of this dispatch, and the circumstances attending it, the Federalists saw fresh proof, not only that Bache and his paper, the most accredited organ of the opposition, were mere tools-perhaps purchased tools of France, but also of a secret correspondence and intercourse between the French Directory and a faction in the United States, relied upon by the French as a means of forcing the American government to submit to their exactions. Another incident which happened about this time gave new force to those suspicions. Dr. Logan, of Philadelphia, grandson of the famous Secretary Logan, who had been the friend and confidential agent of Penn, a Quaker, a benevolent visionary, an enthusiastic admirer of the French republic, whose zeal, influence, and large inherited city property had contributed not a little to carry Philadelphia over to the opposition, departed suddenly and mysteriously for France. He seems to have