made in 1804. Similar XVII. But instead of granting one, the Legis- CHAPTER lature of that year had passed an act prohibiting all unincorporated companies, under severe penalties, from is- 1805. suing notes to pass as money, and giving the Merchants' Bank one year in which to wind up its affairs. acts for the restraint of private banking had recently been passed in Massachusetts, copied from the old act of Parliament of 1741, the first enforcement of which in New England had almost produced a rebellion. These acts had been obtained by the existing banks upon the plausible ground that such prohibitions were essential to the security of the public. But, besides their squint toward monopoly, a most hateful thing in every trading country, they were attended, in the end, by two other evil consequences very fully developed in New York; the making the grant of bank charters a matter of political favoritism and a reward for political services, and the opening a wide door to bribery and corruption. The stockholders of the Merchants' Bank, not discour aged, again made their appearance at Albany the present year. The leading Democrats, from their concern in the Manhattan and State banks, were not only deeply interested in keeping up a monopoly, but they also considered it quite intolerable that an association of Federalists should presume to ask a Democratic Legislature for a bank charter. An agent from the city of New York was dispatched to Albany to oppose the grant; but that agent, by some means or other, was soon silenced, bought over, it was alleged, to the other side. After very hot debates and a violent altercation, in which two senators, both having the title of judge, came to actual fisticuffs within the senatorial precinct, the bill of incorporation passed the Senate by a majority of three votes. A cry was immediately raised by the Clintonians of treachery CHAPTER on the part of the Livingston faction, and of bribery by XVII. the applicants. A committee of investigation, appointed 1805. by the House, laid evidence before that body that certain agents of the bank, one of them a senator, who presently resigned in order to escape expulsion, had endeavored to secure the votes of certain Democratic members by offering them shares in the stock, with a guarantee, did the members not choose to pay up the assessments, of purchase after the charter was granted at twenty-five per cent. advance. It was also proved that two of the senators had accepted such offers. The apparent horror of the Clintonians at this discovery would have seemed more real, had not similar, if not the very same, expedients been employed but two years before in obtaining the charter of the Democratic State bank. As it was, their April. clamor produced but little effect, and the bill passed the House by a decided majority. The treacherous Democrats in the Legislature were at once attacked with great fury in the Albany Register and the American Citizen, in the latter paper by the pen of Tunis Wortman, as rancorous as it was fluent. An appeal was made to the Council of Revision to defeat the bill; and Judge Spencer, as a member of that body, exerted his utmost efforts against it; maintaining, first, that the bank was not needed, and, secondly, that the charter had been obtained by corruption. Governor Lewis, Chancellor Lansing, Chief-justice Kent, and Judg. es Livingston and Thompson, gave it their approval, and it became a law. But from that moment was formed, on the part of the Clintonians, a settled and violent opposition to the administration of Governor Lewis. As to another measure adopted at this session, on the recommendation of the governor, there can be no difference of opinion. This was the appropriation of the pro XVII. ceeds of the remaining state lands, amounting to about CHAPTER a million and a half of acres, toward constituting the existing school fund of the State of New York. Chancellor Livingston, having resigned his embassy to France, in which he was succeeded by his brother-in-law Armstrong, withdrew thenceforth from public life, for which his increasing deafness quite incapacitated him. Yet he still displayed the vigor and enterprise characteristic of his family. At Paris he had become acquainted with Fulton, and presently entered with him upon a series of expensive experiments, for which his ample estates furnished the means, resulting finally in bringing into practical use that magnificent invention of steam navigation. Livingston's attention was also much given to agriculture, and he aided in introducing the use of plaster of Paris as a manure. Humphreys, the late minister to Spain, who had secured a fortune by marrying the daughter of a wealthy English merchant at Lisbon, had, since his return to America, given his attention to the improvement of the native flocks by the importation of merinoes, and to the manufacture of fine broad cloths, now for the first time produced in America. Livingston took up the same idea, and he too imported merinoes from Spain. Joel Barlow, whose republican dreams had received a severe check in the elevation of Bonaparte to an imperial throne, returned to America about the same time with Livingston. He had left Connecticut, some fifteen years before, a poor adventurer, but now brought back with him an ample fortune, acquired by commercial speculations. Barlow's reception in New England was exceedingly cool. Having paid a visit to Boston, the newspapers there republished his famous fourth-of-July song of "The Guillotine," and they also threw in his teeth his dis 1805. XVII. CHAPTER cipleship of Paine, whom, indeed, he had assisted in publishing the first part of his "Age of Reason," besides him1805. self having translated and published Volney's "Ruins of Empires." Having established himself in a magnificent residence in the District of Columbia, Barlow presently put forth, with a splendor of typography hitherto unknown in America, and in a new and enlarged edition, under the title of the "Columbiad," his "Vision of Columbus," originally published before his embarkation for France. It is, however, on his vigorous prose that Barlow's claims as a writer must principally rest. Before the termination of Chase's trial, the impeachFebruary. ment of the Pennsylvania judges had reached a similar end. The judges had shown their sagacity in retaining Dallas for their defense. All the other eminent lawyers of the state were Federalists, and when applied to by the managers they all refused to take a fee in the case. The managers themselves were quite inadequate to so serious a business. Hence the necessity of employing Rodney, from the neighboring State of Delaware, under circumstances which might call to mind M'Kean's original appointment as chief justice of Pennsylvania. A majority of the senators pronounced the judges guilty; but as that majority was short of two thirds, the result was an acquittal. The fury, at this result, of the Aurora and the ultra Democrats, knew no bounds. The project was immediately started for a convention to remodel the state Constitution, and a memorial to that effect was got up and presented to the Legislature. A large number of the more moderate Democrats, including all the advocates of M'Kean's vetoes and the opponents of Leib and Duane, were by no means willing to go this length; and they prepared and presented a counter memorial. XVII. The propositions for altering the constitution of the CHAPTER national judiciary and Senate, brought forward by Randolph and Nicholson; the semi-Revolutionary step, or ap- 1805. proach to it, taken by the Democratic convention which Pierrepont Edwards had called together in Connecticut; and now this proposition for a new constitution for Pennsylvania, together with the violence of the Clintonians. in New York, excited general alarm, as evidences of the existence in the country of an ultra radical and Revolutionary party. Yet the memorial for a convention in Pennsylvania only proposed to make the election of senators annual; to reduce the patronage of the governor; and to limit the term of office of the judges-a thing already existing in Connecticut, Vermont, and Ohio, and since substantially carried into effect, not in Pennsylvania only, but in New York and many other states; and which (in spite of conservative objectors) may be considered as now coincident with the prevailing political ideas of intelligent men in America. Longer experience has tended to produce the conviction that all select bodies in which the appointing power may be vested, while they are hardly less liable to delusion than the mass of the voters, are far more likely to be managed by intrigue and warped by private interests. It is also to be borne in mind that the improved political education of the people, the multiplication of newspapers, and the immense and increasing diffusion of intelligence, has made practicable for us an infusion of democracy into the administration of public affairs which half a century ago might have been at least questionable, if not dangerous. The moderate Democrats took the name of CONSTITUTIONALISTS; and, as a central point for operations, they organized what they called "the Constitutional Society." The other section of the party constituted them |