CHAPTER thus richly provided for, the one as attorney for the EastXVI. ern District of Pennsylvania, the other as attorney for 1801. the Southern District of New York. Livingston had

already been rewarded at home by the still more lucrative office of mayor of the city of New York, a post at that time not elective, but in the gift of the Council of Appointment, including among its duties that of chief judge for the city, and enjoying a revenue from fees said to amount to $10,000 a year.

Dallas was also very desirous to hold, in conjunction with his office of United States district attorney, that of recorder of the city of Philadelphia, given to him by Governor M'Kean. It had been one of Dallas's first official acts to discontinue, by the president's order, the prosecution instituted against Duane, at the request of the Senate of the United States, for a libel on that body. But this did not prevent Duane from attacking, with a good deal of severity, the anti-Republican conjunction, in the person of Dallas, of two lucrative offices, state and national; and, finally, Dallas was obliged to resign his recordership, by a special act of the Legislature to that effect, passed in spite of the governor's veto.

Duane himself was presently admitted to a share of pecuniary emolument by a contract given to him for the public printing, and for supplying the public offices with stationery.

In a number of cases, including some judicial offices, though Adams's appointments had been confirmed, the commissions had not yet issued when his term expired. In these cases the commissions were withheld, and new appointments were made. The legality of this proceeding, even in the case of judicial appointments, was subsequently sustained by the Supreme Court, on a process of mandamus sued out against the Secretary of State to

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compel him to issue commissions to certain persons nom- CHAPTER inated by Adams and confirmed by the Senate as justices of the peace for the District of Columbia. But, 1801. notwithstanding this decision, Jefferson was greatly outraged that the court should have presumed even to entertain 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 collectorship 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 particu lar 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 electioneering document (the choice of presidential electors being then about to take place), Noah Webster had immediately published a cutting reply, entitled, "A Rod for the Fool's Back."

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CHAPTER The younger Bishop's second oration, delivered at a festival to celebrate the Republican triumph, was a paral1801. lel, 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 him 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 be properly 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 proceeded 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, oppression, intolerance, and anti-Revolutionary adherence to Great Britain.

This, however, did not satisfy. The Federalists enumerated with emphasis an Aquila Giles, marshal of the

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Eastern District of New York; a Joshua Sands, collector CHAPTER of that port; a James Watson, navy agent; a Nicholas Fish, supervisor for New York of the internal revenue; 1801. 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! The partisans of Jefferson replied, on the other hand, that out of two hundred and twenty-eight attorneys, marshals, supervisors, collectors, naval officers, and surveyors, appointments held at the pleasure of the president, one hundred and ninety-eight were still in the hands of the Federalists. 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 imperceptibly 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 May 14. 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 widower, were favorable to that ultra Republican simplicity which he sought to introduce. What occasion for levees in such a wilderness, where nobody came except on public business? Eight years after, Mrs. Mad

CHAPTER ison revived a usage exceedingly convenient, and ever since continued.

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1801.

Another change from the alarming monarchical style of the former administrations, announced also in the same letter, 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, being, perhaps, one cause of that intolerable 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.

Though the late administrations had been forced into the purchase of treaties of peace with the Barbary powers mainly by the clamor of the opposition, who dreaded the expense of coercion, yet the large sum expended in