XVI. 1801 sequently sustained by the Supreme Court, on a process CHAPTER of mandamus sued out against the Secretary of State to compel him to issue commissions to certain persons nom inated by Adams and confirmed by the Senate as jus tices of the peace for the District of Columbia. But, notwithstanding this decision, Jefferson was greatly outraged that the court should have presumed even to en tertain such a suit. All this was quietly submitted to as a matter of course, but some removals and appointments of officers of the customs and excise raised a loud clamor on the part of the Federalists. One of the most noticeable of these cases was the removal of Elizur Goodrich, lately a representative in Congress from Connecticut, who had resigned his seat to accept the office of collector of New Haven. In his place was appointed Samuel Bishop, a respectable old man of seventy-seven, but so nearly blind that he could hardly write his name, and with no particular qualifications for the office, or claim to it, except being the father of one Abraham Bishop, a young Democrat, a lawyer without practice, for whom the appointment was really intended. The claims of the younger Bishop consisted in two political orations which he had recently delivered, one of them by a sort of surprise, before a literary society of Yale College-an occasion upon which all the dignitaries of the state were collected. This was a vehement, flippant, but excessively shallow declamation, yet suited to alarm the popular mind, the burden of it being that by commercial, military, clerical, and legal delusions, a monarchy and aristocracy were just on the point of being saddled on the country. To this oration, already in print before it had been delivered, and which was at once distributed as an election. eering document (the choice of presidential electors being CHAPTER then about to take place), Noah Webster had immediXVI. ately published a cutting reply, entitled, "A Rod for 1801. the Fool's Back." The younger Bishop's second ora tion, delivered at a festival to celebrate the Republican triumph, was a parallel drawn at great length, between Jefferson and Jesus Christ, "the illustrious chief who, once insulted, now presides over the Union, and Him who, once insulted, now presides over the universe." To a remonstrance against this removal and appointment, made by the merchants of New Haven, who quoted the inaugural promise "to promote the general welfare, without regarding the distinctions of party," the July 12. president replied, that the example of Franklin, still an ornament to human nature, when past the age of the new collector, as well as the offices of town clerk, justice of the peace, mayor of New Haven, and chief judge of the Common Pleas for that county, held by Bishop at the time of his appointment, furnished abundant proof of his ability, notwithstanding his age, to perform, with such assistance as he might see fit to employ, the duties of his office. As to Goodrich, he was displaced, to be sure, but it could not properly be called a removal, for he ought not to have accepted the office, not knowing if those whose agent he was to be would have confidence in him. Besides, the Federalists had all the offices; while a due participation in office by those who now constituted a majority of the nation was no more than a matter of right. Few died, and none resigned; and how could this participation be brought about except by removal. That was a painful duty, in which he should proceed with deliberation and inquiry, so as to inflict the least private distress, and to throw, as far as possible, such as could not be avoided, on delinquency, oppress XVI. ion, intolerance, and anti-Revolutionary adherence to CHAPTER Great Britain. This, however, did not satisfy. The Federalists enu- 1801. merated with emphasis an Aquila Giles, marshal of the Eastern District of New York; a Joshua Sands, collector of that port; a James Watson, navy agent; a Nicholas Fish, supervisor for New York of the internal revenue; and a Henry Miller, supervisor for Pennsylvania, all of them meritorious officers of the Revolution, and falling within none of Jefferson's rules, yet all removed to make room for political partisans, in one case for an old Tory. To these complaints the partisans of Jefferson replied, that out of two hundred and twenty-eight attorneys, marshals, supervisors, collectors, naval officers, and surveyors, appointments held at the pleasure of the presi dent, one hundred and ninety-eight were still in the hands of the Federalists; and to these might be added the subordinate stations in the executive departments, in which few changes had been made, partly from the dif ficulty of finding Republicans competent to fill them—a large proportion of the active men on that side being better at declamation than at business. Besides the abovementioned offices in the gift of the president, there were about a thousand deputy post-masters, but only a few of these post-masterships were lucrative enough to make them objects of desire. Jefferson had been greatly alarmed lest the presidential levees introduced by Washington might impercepti bly lead to the ceremonials of a court, if not, indeed, to monarchy itself. He, therefore, solemnly announced, in a letter to Macon, that for the future there were to be no more levees. The removal of the seat of government to Washington, then a little village in the midst of the woods, and the fact, also, that Jefferson was a May 14. XVI. CHAPTER widower, were favorable to that ultra Republican sim plicity which he sought to introduce. What occasion 1801. for levecs in such a wilderness, where nobody came except on public business? Eight years after, Mrs. Madison revived a usage exceedingly convenient, and ever since continued. Another change announced also in the same letter, from the alarming monarchical style of the former administrations, was the disuse of speeches and answers at the opening of the session, and the substitution of a written message, to be sent in manuscript and read by the clerk, to which no special answer would be expected; a change to which Jefferson was perhaps the more inclined, at least so the Federalists maliciously suggested, by reason of his tall, ungainly figure, comparing but ill with Washington's or Adams's, and his total destitution of gifts as a public speaker. The change thus introduced has not only been retained, but has been gradually copied in most of the states; one cause perhaps of that in tolerable prolixity into which executive communications. have tended more and more to run. But while thus giving up the forms, Jefferson clung with instinctive tenacity to the substance of power. A Nov 5. circular addressed to his cabinet ministers, though filled with flattering declarations of "unlimited, unqualified, and unabated confidence," very plainly evinced that the new president had no intention to tolerate any of the pretensions set up by Adams's ministers, or to allow the government to be parceled out, as he expressed it, among four independent heads, drawing sometimes in opposite directions. Deferring for once to the example of Washington, he very properly claimed, since the people had imposed the responsibility upon him, the unrestrained right of final decision. XVI. Though the late administrations had been forced into CHAPTER the purchase of treaties of peace with the Barbary pow ers mainly by the clamor of the opposition, who dreaded 1801. the expense of coercion, yet the large sum expended in presents (near two millions of dollars) had formed a favorite topic of electioneering declamation, more especially as it had not entirely answered its purpose. The treaty with Tripoli, the last of the series, had been purchased by the payment of a gross sum down. But the Bey, when he compared his case with that of Algiers, naturally grew dissatisfied with this arrangement; and on various pretenses of quarrel, he threatened war against the United States. The building of national ships had first been commenced for the restraint of the Barbary pirates; and one of Jefferson's first acts was to dispatch Commodore Dale, with four out of the six vessels still retained in commission, to watch the proceedings of the Bey, and, if necessary, to repel hostilities. The insolence of these piratical states, fostered by an almost unaccountable submission to their pretensions by the Christian nations of Europe, had been strikingly exhibited in the conduct of the Dey of Algiers toward Captain Bainbridge, on his arrival there in the frigate George Washington with the annual tribute. The frigate which came to anchor under the guns of the castle, and which could hardly attempt to depart without danger of destruction, was pressed into the Dey's service for the purpose of carrying presents and an embassador to Constantinople, under threats, in case of refusal, of an immediate renewal of hostilities against the United States. To Bainbridge's remonstrances and those of the consul O'Brien, the Dey replied, "You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves, and therefore I have a right to order you as I think proper." All the tributary nations. 1800. Sept. |