CHAPTER political career, not yet (1851) finished, by holding a XIV. seat in this Convention. The attempt met, however, 1799. with very feeble support, and, so far as related to the subject of slavery, the Constitution underwent no change. A similar proposition for the gradual abolition of slavery had been introduced a short time before into the Maryland Assembly, but it found so little encouragement there as to be withdrawn by the mover. Even in Pennsylvania, a proposition introduced into the Assembly for the immediate and total abolition of slavery, though supported by the earnest efforts of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, failed of success. Two judicial decisions, made in the course of the summer, furnished the opposition to the general government with new topics of bitter complaint. In the year 1797 a mutiny had occurred on board the British frigate Hermione, then in the West Indies; several of the officers had been killed, and the vessel, having been carried into La Guayra, on the Spanish Main, had there been sold by the mutineers. In the course of the present summer, one Thomas Nash, former boatswain of the Hermione, and an active leader in the mutiny, had made his appearance at Charleston, in South Carolina, under the name. of Nathan Robbins, and having betrayed himself by imprudent boastings, had been arrested at the instance of the British consul, under that clause of Jay's treaty which provided for the mutual surrender of forgers and murderers. Application having been made to the president on the subject, he wrote to Bee, the district judge, to give the prisoner up on proof of identity and the production of such further evidence as would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial had the offense been committed within the jurisdiction of the United States. The ground taken by the president was, that a national XIV. ship of war on the high seas formed a part of the juris- CHAPTER diction of the nation under whose flag she sailed. To avert his impending fate, the fugitive mutineer as- 1799. sumed the name of Jonathan Robbins, produced a notarial certificate or "protection" granted in New York, in 1795, to a person of that name, and also made an affidavit that he was born in Danbury, in Connecticut, and that two years before he had been pressed into the British service. In spite, however, of these documents, his identification as the Thomas Nash of the Hermione being complete, he was delivered up, and, being carried to July. Halifax, was tried by court martial, found guilty, and hanged. He confessed at his execution that he was an Irishman, and it appeared by the Hermione's books that he had entered the service at the beginning of the war, purporting to be born at Waterford. But before the result of this investigation had become known, a great clamor had been raised against the president and Jay's treaty, in which Charles Pinckney, now a Federal senator from South Carolina, and who had acted as counsel for the prisoner, took a very active part. The president was charged with having given up an American citizen to be tried for a mutiny, which, if he really did join it, was justifiable enough on his part, since he had been pressed into the British service; and even after the result of the Halifax court martial was known, the same accusation was still continued, the proof adduced on the trial being represented as manufactured for the occasion. The other case was that of Isaac Williams, one of those American renegadoes who, under color of being naturalized as French citizens, had enriched themselves by privateering, under the French flag, against American as well as British commerce. After making himself rich and notorious by this discreditable means, Williams had CHAPTER the audacity to return to Connecticut, his native state, XIV. there to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. But he was presently 1799. arrested and tried under that clause of Jay's treaty which Sept. 28 prohibited privateering by American citizens against British commerce. The trial came on before Chief-justice Ellsworth—-one of the last cases on which he ever sat--and notwithstanding the French letters of naturalization produced in defense, he held that Williams was still subject to American law, it not being in the power of any man to throw off by his own volition his allegiance to the country in which he had been born. Under this doctrine-held at the present day, by the decided weight even of American authority, to be good law, and never questioned in any other country-Williams was found guilty, and fined and imprisoned; very much to the dissatisfaction of the ultra Republican sympathizers with France, and advocates of the right and power of expatriation. Another point of law which furnished still further occasion for clamor and alarm was the claim which had been set up for the Federal courts of a common law criminal jurisdiction—the right, that is, without any special statute, to punish by fine and imprisonment, whenever committed under such circumstances as would bring them within the general range of Federal jurisdiction, such acts as, without any special statute, were indictable by the common law of England and the states. Edmund Randolph, who, since his dismissal by Washington, had remained in perfect political obscurity, though enjoying an extensive practice as a lawyer, attempted to recall attention to himself by attacking this doctrine, since abandoned, in a pamphlet—a work in which he was strenuously encouraged by Jefferson. Nor did Jefferson exhibit any disposition to give up causes. XIV. his own doctrine of nullification, notwithstanding the re- CHAPTER pudiation of it by so many states. After a consultation between him, Madison, and Wilson C. Nicholas, it was 1799. agreed that Madison, who had now again come actively forward, having been chosen to the House of Delegates on purpose to oppose Patrick Henry, should draw up a report in answer to the various objections urged against the resolutions of the last session. To make this report as palatable as possible, it was to express great attachment to the Union, and indisposition to break it for slight Jefferson wished, however, a positive reservation of the right to make the recent alleged violations of the compact "the ground of doing hereafter what might rightfully be done now," should these violations be continued or repeated. But the more cautious and moderate Madison much preferred to argue the abstract point of mere right, without going so far as to suggest any actual exercise of it, either present or future. And, indeed, if such a right really existed, Jefferson's proposed reservation was quite superfluous, since any violation of the contract, continued or renewed, would, without any reservation, itself afford ground enough for action. The management of matters in Kentucky was intrusted to Wilson C. Nicholas, then about to make a journey thither to look after the affairs of his deceased brother. He employed as the active agent John Breckenridge, already mentioned, on whom, since the death of George Nicholas, the political leadership of that state had devolved. "To avoid suspicions, which were pretty strong in some quarters on the late occasion," so he himself tells us, Jefferson omitted to prepare any thing in writing; yet, except a preamble declining to enter the field of argument, but complaining of the terms in which, in some of the states, the former resolutions had been denounced XIV. CHAPTER as incompatible with the Federal Union, the material part of the resolutions brought forward and adopted was 1799. mainly copied from such portions of Jefferson's original Nov. 14. draft as Nicholas had omitted; including the famous declaration that, in case of violations of the Constitution, "the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of the infraction, and that a nullification by those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts, under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy." But, for all these bold words, the Kentucky politicians were even less disposed now than at the former session to commit themselves to any positive action. Content with asserting the general principle in the abstract, even the verbal nullification of the Alien and Sedition Laws was not repeated, the Legislature being satisfied instead with a mere protest against their constitutionality. Madison performed his part of the programme by bringing forward, a few weeks after, in the Virginia Assembly, a long and elaborate report, purporting to justify the resolutions of the preceding session as "founded in truth, consonant with the Constitution, and conducive to its preservation;" but winding up, in the same inconclusive manner as the Kentucky resolves, with a mere protest against the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws. In spite of the stimulus of party spirit, Madison had not so far forgotten his large share in framing the Constitution and procuring its adoption as to be willing to sanction, as a right reserved to and vested in the states, a veto upon the laws of the Union wholly incompatible with any quiet exercise of the federal authority; and the report, while pretending to justify the resolutions, in fact abandoned them in their essential part. The assertion in the Virginia resolutions of '98 of a right in the indi |