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CHAPTER ported at twenty cents, to twenty dollars, brought on a lively debate as to the policy of encouraging immigration. 1797. The high duty was advocated by several Federalists as a check on the facility of acquiring the right of citizenship. Gallatin, Swanwick, and Lyon opposed it as excessive, and it was finally fixed at the amount above mentioned. A stamp-tax, varying in amount with the value of the subject matter, was also imposed on receipts for legacies, policies of insurance, bonds, promissory notes, bank-notes, bills of exchange, protests, letters of attor ney, inventories, bills of lading, and certificates of de benture. The Committee of Ways and Means, hitherto composed of one member from each State, was reduced at this session to seven members taken from the House at large, a number at which it has ever since remained.

To most of the above measures a very decided opposition was made. The equipment of the frigates was specially opposed, under the apprehension that the president might employ them as convoys to the American trade in the West Indies. The numerous French cruisers in those seas made prize of every American vessel which they met, except when those vessels had licenses granted by the French consuls, or were known to belong to zealous advocates of the French interest. Some partial protection had been obtained from convoy granted by Brit. ish ships of war, but the idea of employing armed vessels of our own for that purpose was earnestly deprecated by the opposition, and even by some of the Federalists, as little less than a declaration of war against France. Gallatin admitted that depredations without number were committed in the West India seas by vessels under the French flag, but he suggested that they were chiefly by pirates, without any commissions or authority; to which it was well answered that it was hard indeed if

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the frigates could not be employed to protect our vessels CHAPTER against pirates, for fear of giving offence to France! Giles, Macon, Gallatin, and Smith of Maryland, labored 1797. very hard, and prevailed upon the House to insert into the bill, among other restrictions, a provision that the president should not send the frigates out of the jurisdiction of the United States; but as the Senate refused to concur, this and the other restrictions were afterward struck out. The more zealous Federalists urged the immediate purchase of nine additional vessels, to be armed and equipped for purposes of convoy. Doubtful what the consequences might be of armed collision, at the discretion of individuals, the president had issued a circular to the custom houses, renewing and confirming the rule hitherto acted upon, to grant no clearances to armed vessels except such as were bound to the East Indies or the Mediterranean. The legality of this circular was called in question, and it was proposed to authorize by an express act the arming of merchant vessels in their own defense. But both these measures, the arming of merchant vessels and the additional ships of war, were defeated by the opposition, with the aid of Dayton and the waverers, on the ground that it would be better to await the results of the new mission. Varnum, in the course of this debate, declared that he could see nothing in the conduct of France like a wish to injure the citizens of the United States. He wondered that such an outcry should be raised because three or four American ships had been captured and carried into France. Smith, of Maryland, believed the merchants would submit to any loss sooner than go to war; while Swanwick boldly asserted that more captures were made in the West Indies by the British than by the French.

A bill, originating in the House, for raising an addi

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1797.

CHAPTER tional corps of artillerists and engineers, failed to pass A Senate bill for a provisional army of fifteen thousand men was defeated even in that body. The opposition raised a great outcry against every thing that involved expense, on the ground that the treasury was empty; but they also opposed, with no less zeal, every attempt to fill it, seeming to regard, as the only security for the peace of the country, the depriving the government of all means to defend it. Another bill was also brought in (designed to meet the case of such patriots as Barney), to prevent citizens of the United States from entering into the service of foreign powers, but with a clause, de fining a method whereby citizens, either native or adopted, might relinquish their connection with the United States, and transfer their allegiance to a foreign power, thereby avoiding the penalties of the bill. This clause led to a curious debate on the subject of perpetual allegiance and voluntary expatriation-a question which was found to be surrounded by so many difficulties that the entire bill was finally dropped. It seemed to be going too far formally to allow citizens of the United States to abandon their own country and to make war upon it. Yet how could that be avoided, should any act on the subject of foreign service be passed, so long as the United States, in the impressment controversy with Great Britain, claimed for naturalized foreigners all the rights and immunities of native-born citizens?

July 3.

The president, in the course of the session, transmitted papers, from which it appeared that the Spanish authorities in Louisiana were opposing serious obstacles to the survey of the southern boundary line of the United States, as provided for by the recent treaty, and that they hesitated also to deliver up the posts north of the thirtyfirst degree of north latitude. Various pretenses of de

lay were urged, such as apprehension of a British inva CHAPTER sion from Canada, to resist which these posts might be necessary, and uncertainty whether the fortifications 1797. were to be destroyed or left standing. The real reason, no doubt, was the expectation of a breach between the United States and France, which might furnish an excuse for the non-fulfillment of the treaty. The fact, indeed, came to light some years afterward, that the Baron De Carondelet, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, had even gone so far as to dispatch one Thomas Power as a secret agent to Kentucky, to renew with the old Spanish partisans in that region the intrigue for the separation of the Western country from the Union, and its erection into an independent state, in close alliance with Spain; the late disputed territory on the east bank of the Mississippi to be divided between them. Sebastian, one of the judges of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, seems have entered zealously into this new project, but his old coadjutors, with whom he communicated on the subject, Innis, judge of the Federal District Court, and George Nicholas, late district attorney, and at present attorney general of the state, thought it would be a very dangerous project, since the Western people, being secured by the Spanish treaty in the navigation of the Mississippi, had lost all inducement for such a movement. When testifying as to this matter some ten years afterward before a committee of the Kentucky Legislature, Innis gave as a reason why he and Nicholas had kept this intrigue to themselves, that as they were opposed to the Federal administration, and believed that the president kept a watchful eye over their actions, to have made any communication on the subject would have had the appearance of courting his favor. They gave as another reason for saying nothing about an intrigue from

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CHAPTER which they apprehended no danger, their belief that the president was disposed, on the slightest pretext, to send 1797. an army into Kentucky, which they conceived would be a grievance upon the people. There were, doubtless, other still weightier reasons, which Innis did not give: unwillingness to damage the party to which they belong. ed by this new proof of foreign influence, attempted and exercised over some of its leaders; and the danger of provoking an investigation which might unravel former intrigues, and which certainly would cut short the pay ment of any further Spanish pensions-a favor enjoyed by Sebastian at least, if not by some of the others.

Along with the papers transmitted to Congress in relation to the Spanish business was the copy of a letter from William Blount, late governor of the Territory south of the Ohio, and now one of the senators from Tennessee, addressed to a recently-appointed Indian agent among the Cherokees, by whom it had been communicated to the president. It appeared from this letter, as well as from information furnished by Liston, the new British minister, of whom explanations had been asked, that Blount was engaged in an intrigue for transferring New Orleans and the neighboring districts to the British by means of a joint expedition, Britain to furnish a naval force, and a co-operating corps of backwoodsmen and Indians to be raised on the western frontier of the United States. Desperately involved in extensive land specula. tions in Tennessee, and wishing to relieve himself by getting up an English company for the purchase of his lands, Blount dreaded the consequences of a retransfer to the French, a military and not a commercial nation, of the outlet of the Mississippi, a transfer expected, and indeed supposed by some to be already made. Conceiving that it would be for the interest of the Western people,