rides upon the mountain wave, the short-sightedness of that policy, which trusted to gun-boats and drydocks for the defence of the country upon the world of waters, and which had crippled the naval arm, and tamed the gallant spirit of the Union, for the glory of retrenchment and reform.

On the other hand, the renewal of the European war, and the partialities of Mr. Jefferson in favor of France, enabled him to accomplish an object which greatly enlarged the territories of the Union-which removed a most formidable source of future dissensions with France-which exceedingly strengthened the relative influence and power of the State and section of the Union, to which he himself belonged, and which in its consequences changed the character of the Confederacy itself. This operation, by far the greatest that has been accomplished by any administration under the Constitution was consummated at the price of fifteen millions of dollars in money, and of a direct, unqualified, admitted violation of the Constitution of the United States. According to the theory of Mr. Jefferson, as applied by him to the alien and sedition acts, it was absolutely null and void. It might have been nullified by the Legislature of any one State in the Union, and if persisted in, would have warranted and justified a combination of States, and their secession from the confederacy in resistance against it.

That an amendment to the Constitution was necessary to legalize the annexation of Louisiana to the

Union, was the opinion both of Mr. Jefferson and of Mr. Madison. They finally acquiesced however in the latitudinous construction of that instrument, which holds the treaty-making powers, together with an act of Congress, sufficient for this operation. It was accordingly thus consummated by Mr. Jefferson, and has been sanctioned by the acquiescence of the people. Upwards of thirty years have passed away since this great change was effected. By a subsequent Treaty with Spain, by virtue of the same powers and authority, the Floridas have been annexed also to the Union, and the boundaries of the United States have been extended from the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean. There is now nothing in the Constitution of the United States to inhibit their extension to the two polar circles from the Straits of Hudson to the Straits of Magellan. Whether this very capacity of enlargement of territory and multiplication of States by the constructive power of Congress, without check or control either by the States or by their people, will not finally terminate in the dissolution of the Union itself, time alone can determine. The credit of the acquisition of Louisiana, whether to be considered as a source of good or of evil, is perhaps due to Robert R. Livingston more than to any other man, but the merit of its accomplishment must ever remain as the great and imperishable memorial of the administration of Jefferson.

In the interval between the Peace of Amiens, and the renewal of the wars of France with the rest of

Europe, the grasping spirit and gigantic genius of Napoleon had been revolving projects of personal aggrandizement and of national ambition of which this western hemisphere was to be the scene. He had extorted from the languishing and nerveless dynasty of the Bourbons in Spain the retrocession of the province of Louisiana, with a description of boundary sufficiently indefinite, to raise questions of limits whenever it might suit his purpose to settle them by the intimation of his will. Here it had been his purpose to establish a military Colony, with the Mexican dominions of Spain on one side, and the United States of America and the continental colonies of Great Britain on the other, in the centre of the western hemisphere, the stand for a lever to wield at his pleasure the destinies of the world. This plan was discomposed by a petty squabble with Great Britain about the Island of Malta; and a project wilder if possible than his military Colony of Louisiana-namely the Casarian operation of conquering the British Islands themselves by direct invasion. The transfer of Louisiana had been stipulated by a secret treaty, but possession had not been taken. Mr. Livingston was then the Minister of the United States in France. He had been made acquainted with the existence of the Treaty of retrocession of Louisiana, and by a memorial of great ability, had expostulated against it, urging as scarcely less essential to the interests of France than of the United States, that the Province should be ceded to them. This memorial when presented had

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met with little attention from Napoleon. His military Colony of twenty thousand men was on the point of embarkation, under the command of one of his Lieutenants, destined himself in after time to wear the crown of Gustavus-Adolphus, when the Iron Crown of Lombardy and the imperial crown of France, after encircling the brows of Napoleon, should have melted before the leaden sceptre of the restored Bourbons. Napoleon was to rise to the summit of human greatness, and to fall from it over another precipice, than that to which he was approaching with his military colony of Louisiana. When he determined to renew the war with England, still mistress of the seas, he could no longer risk the fortunes of his soldiers in a passage across the Atlantic, and unable as he was to cope with the thunders of Britain upon the ocean, he saw that Louisiana itself, if he should take possession of the Province, must inevitably fall an easy prey to the enemy with whom he was to contend. He therefore abandoned his project of conquests in America, and determined at once to sell his Colony of Louisiana to the United States.

Never in the fortunes of mankind was there a more sudden, complete and propitious turn in the tide of events than this change in the purposes of Napoleon proved to the administration of Mr. Jefferson. The wrangling altercation with Spain for the navigation of the Mississippi, had been adjusted during the administration of Washington, by a treaty, which had conceded to them the right, and stipulated to make its

enjoyment effective, of deposit at New Orleans. In repurchasing from Spain the Colony of Louisiana, Napoleon, to disencumber himself from the burden of this stipulation, and to hold in his hand a rod over the western section of this Union, had compelled the dastardly and imbecile monarch of Spain to commit an act of perfidy, by withdrawing from the people of the United States this stipulated right of deposit before delivering the possession of the Colony to France. The great artery of the commerce of the Union was thus choaked in its circulation. The sentiment of surprise, of alarm, of indignation, was instantaneous and universal among the people. The hardy and enterprising settlers of the western country could hardly be restrained from pouring down the swelling floods of their population, to take possession of New Orleans itself, by the immediate exercise of the rights of war. A war with Spain must have been immediately followed by a war with France, which, however just the cause of the United States would have been, must necessarily give a direction to public affairs adverse to the whole system of Mr. Jefferson's policy, and in all probability prove fatal to the success of his administration. Instigations to immediate war, were at once attempted in Congress, and were strongly countenanced by the excited temper of the people. Mr. Jefferson instituted an extraordinary mission both to France and Spain, to remonstrate against the withdrawal of the right of deposit, and to propose anew the purchase of the Island of New Orleans. By one