XVI. the House should first take up a resolution which he had CHAPTER offered for indemnifying those sufferers by French spoli-. ations whose claims on France, in consideration of the 1802. formal release of the United States from any claims under the French treaties, had been finally abandoned by the convention as modified first by the Senate and then by Bonaparte, and lately ratified by the president in its modified form. But, without committing themselves as to the validity of this claim, or stopping to inquire into it, the House refused to be thus diverted from their predetermined course. It was next suggested that, if a reduction of taxes were practicable, it ought to be made, not on distilled spirits, a pernicious luxury, but on tea, coffee, sugar, and salt, articles of necessary consumption, taxed under the existing tariff fifty per cent. on their foreign cost. Special reasons were also urged why the system of internal revenue should not be abolished. That revenue was a sure resource, and in the fluctuations to which foreign trade was exposed, the country might yet be driven to rely upon it. After much experience, the machinery for its collection had been brought into good working order, and it would be well to keep it up against time of need, since to reconstruct it anew would be an affair of labor and delay. But this argument also, the force of which became evident enough some ten or twelve years after, now passed unheeded. Of all subjects of taxation, there was none fitter for it than distilled spirits. The other internal taxes produced but little, and might be repealed; but this, it was urged, ought to be retained for moral as well as financial reaWeighty as this argument was, the majority well understood, though they did not say so, that no greater boon could be conferred upon a very zealous and noisy sons. CHAPTER portion of the Republican party than the repeal of this XVI. same tax, which Jefferson himself had pronounced “exe 1802. crable," and to which Gallatin and others had stimulated a passive resistance, resulting at length in actual insurrection. The repeal, also, had the additional recommendation of getting rid of another batch of obnoxious officeMarch 21. holders. It had been decided upon as a party measure, and was carried sixty-one to twenty-four, several of the Federalists being absent or omitting to vote. It passed March 31. the Senate soon after by a like party division. By a very unusual practice, several calls for information, without being objected to or debated, were silently voted down by the majority, whom the Federalists stigmatized in consequence as the "dumb Legislature." A fourth recommendation of the president was carried April 13. out by the passage of an act repealing the late impediments placed in the way of the naturalization of foreigners, and re-enacting the provisions of the act of 1795, which still continue in force. The retrenchments recommended by the president and adopted by the Congress had in view not only the repeal of the internal taxes, but the provision of means for the prompt reduction of the public debt, always a great bugbear to Jefferson. Gallatin, who aspired to rival Hamilton as a financier, but whose best claims in that respect had thus far been exhibited in a strict adherence to the system of his predecessors, suggested to Congress, and April 29. they adopted, some new arrangements on that head. Somewhat more simple than those previously in force, these arrangements, however, were only feasible with a full treasury, such as Gallatin anticipated, but which his predecessors had never enjoyed. Hamilton's Sinking Fund Act had appropriated a variety of funds out of which to reet the annual interest and installments of XVI. the public debt; and, in addition, such surpluses as CHAPTER might remain after paying the current expenses. Gallatin proposed to pledge absolutely, toward the interest 1802. and discharge of the debt, the round annual sum of $7,300,000, exceeding by $1,200,000 the sum absolutely appropriated by Hamilton's act, leaving the current expenses to be met out of such surplus of revenue as might remain after this annual payment. As the Territory northwest of the Ohio appeared by the census to have a population entitling it to admission into the Union, in accordance with many petitions to that effect, the people residing within the present limits of Ohio were authorized to organize themselves as a April 30. state, a convention to meet at Chilicothe in November to form a constitution. The remainder of the territory was to be annexed to Indiana. In consideration of the passage by the new state of an irrepealable ordinance exempting from taxation for four years all lands newly purchased of the United States, Congress proposed to grant, in return, one township in each section for the support of schools, being one thirty-sixth part of all the lands in the state; besides five per cent. of the proceeds of all lands sold, to be laid out for the construction of roads; three per cent. of it, by a subsequent act, to be expended within the state, and two per cent. upon roads leading to the state from the eastward. The Board of Commissioners which hitherto had managed the affairs of the City of Washington was dissolved by an act of this Congress, and a superintendent appointed in their place. Means were also provided by this same act for paying the loan due to the State of Maryland. Another act provided a municipal government for the city. Just before the close of the jate administration, the CHAPTER renewed negotiation with England on the subject of BritXVI. ish debts had been brought to a conclusion by an agree1802. ment on the part of the United States to pay, in discharge of the liabilities assumed by Jay's treaty, the sum of $2,664,000 in three annual installments. A bill was accordingly passed at this session appropriating the means for this payment, being, in substance, so much added to the assumption of state debts, the larger part of it on account of Virginia. April 26. The subject of the balances due from certain states was again brought up. As no payment could be got, except a partial one made by New York in expenditures on fortifications, a bill was introduced discharging the debt, but it did not pass. One of the results of the recent Republican triumph in Pennsylvania was an Intrusion Act, so called, subjecting to very severe punishment, by fine and imprisonment, the Connecticut settlers on Wyoming lands, under pretended Susquehanna Company grants subsequent to the Trenton decision. These unfortunate squatters thereupon appealed to Congress for the transfer of all such prosecutions to the Federal courts, and a trial out of Pennsylvania. Apart from constitutional difficulties in the way, the fact that they were New Englanders and mostly Federalists left them no hope from this Congress; and, after a twenty years' struggle, which had bred not a little of ill blood between New England and Pennsylvania, they found themselves at length obliged to succumb, and to make such compromises and settlements as they could. A few days before the close of the session, the presi dent communicated to Congress the compact as to the territory between the Mississippi and the Chattahoochee, which, under the full powers granted for that purpose, XVI. had been entered into by the commissioners of Geor- CHAPTER gia on the one part, and those of the United States on the other; the latter being the Secretary of State, the 1802. Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney General. By this compact, to remain in full force unless rejected by one party or the other within six months, Georgia ceded to the United States all her claims to territory west of what now constitutes her western boundary, on condition of receiving out of the first nett proceeds of the lands sold the sum of $1,250,000, and, what ultimately proved of far higher cost, an undertaking on the part of the United States to extinguish, at the expense of the Federal treasury, the Indian title to the lands reserved by Georgia "as early as the same could be peaceably obtained on reasonable terms;" especially the Indian title to that tract between the Oconee and Ocmulgee, so long and so perseveringly sought by the Georgians. was also provided, by the terms of the compact, that whenever the population of the territory thus ceded should amount to 60,000, or earlier at the option of Congress, the ceded territory was to be erected into a state, on the same terms and conditions contained in the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Territory northwest of the Ohio, "that article only excepted which prohibits slavery." It Of the hundred thousand square miles of territory of which the United States thus acquired the jurisdiction, all except a very small portion was still in the hands of the Indians; the Creeks and Cherokees toward the east, the Chickasaws and Choctaws toward the west. The only portion to which the Indian title had been extinguished by the former French possessors, and on which any white settlements existed, were two tracts of nearly three thousand square miles each, one extending along |