continued many months longer. Some thought it ought to be repealed in the spring, but none were desirous of extending it further than the 1st of September. Looking forward to the change of policy, various expedients connected with the repeal were proposed, but neither of these propositions according with the views of a large majority, they were all postponed on the 10th of February, by 65 votes to 55.*

In the meanwhile the embargo was pressing with increasing severity on every class of the community, whether producers or consumers, and this pressure drove the people of New England, where the embargo was most felt, to a point of disaffection which had never before been witnessed in the United States. Many, therefore, entertained strong hopes that some course would be taken during the present session, by which the industry and enterprise of the country might be again put into activity, its vessels be once more suffered to venture on the ocean, and perhaps be permitted to arm in their own defence, if not to make reprisals. Among the many objections to the embargo, there was one which operated strongly on its friends, and that was the frequency with which it was violated. There were also many cases in which the law was clandestinely evaded. The majority of Congress who were willing to try it longer, rather than resort to war, passed a law during this session, which armed the executive with new powers for enforcing it.

The administration and the majority who supported it were, before Congress rose, turned from the purpose of trying the embargo a few months longer, from fear of the growing disaffection of the New England states.

It has appeared by subsequent disclosures, that in the month of February, Mr. John Quincy Adams, who had supported the administration in the embargo and other measures of policy, ever since the affair of the Chesapeake, and who, finding his course was not approved by the legislature of Massachusetts, had resigned his seat in the senate of the United States, made to the president a communication to the following effect, namely: that from information received by him, and which might be relied on, it was the determination of the ruling party in Massachusetts, and even New England (federalists), if the embargo was persisted in, no longer to submit to it, but to separate themselves from the Union; at least until the existing obstacles to commerce were removed; that the plan was already digested, and that such was the pressure of the embargo on the community, that they would be supported by the people.

The danger thus threatening the Union was deemed paramount to all other considerations, and the president, with his cabinet, concluded that it would be better, to modify their interdiction of commerce in such a way that, while employment was afforded to American vessels, Great Britain and France should still feel the loss of American commerce. Congress accordingly passed a law for repealing the embargo after the 15th of March, ⚫ Tucker.

as to all nations except France and Great Britain, and interdicting with them all commercial intercourse whatever, whether by exporting or importing, either directly or circuitously. This measure has always since gone under the name of the non-intercourse law. It passed the house of representatives on the 27th of February, by 81 votes to 40, and became a law on the 1st of March, 1809. The repeal of the embargo took effect on the 15th of the same month.

*

It is not known whether the information thus communicated by Mr. Adams was entirely accurate, but that the growing discontents of the country made some change expedient, would seem to be very reasonable. In most of the state legislatures of New England there was a systematic purpose to defeat the measures of the general government, especially in * The following statement was authorized by Mr. Adams, and published in the National Intelligencer of October 21, 1828, and republished in Niles's Register, vol. xxxv., p. 138:"At the session of Congress which commenced in November, 1808, Mr. Adams was a private citizen, residing at Boston. The embargo was still in force, operating with extreme pressure upon the interests of the people, and was viewed as a most effective instrument by the party prevailing in the state against the administration of Mr. Jefferson. The people were constantly instigated to forcible resistance against it, and juries after juries acquitted the violators of it, upon the ground that it was unconstitutional, assumed in the face of a solemn decision of the district court of the United States. A separation of the Union was openly stimulated in the public prints, and a convention of delegates of the New England states, to meet at New Haven, was intended and proposed.

Mr. Giles, and several other members of Congress, during this session, wrote to Mr. Adams confidential letters, informing him of the various measures proposed as reinforcements or substitutes for the embargo, and soliciting his opinions upon the subject. He answered these letters with frankness, and in confidence. He earnestly recommended the substitution of the non-intercourse for the embargo; and, in giving his reasons for this preference, was necessarily led to enlarge upon the views and purposes of certain leaders of the party which had the management of the state legislature in their hands. He urged that a continuance of the em bargo much longer would certainly be met by forcible resistance, supported by the legislature, and probably by the judiciary of the state. That to quell that resistance, if force should be resorted to by the government, it would produce a civil war; and that in that event, he had no doubt the leaders of the party would secure the co-operation with them of Great Britain. That their object was, and had been for several years, a dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a separate confederation, he knew from unequivocal evidence, although not proveable in a court of law; and at, in the case of a civil war, the aid of Great Britain to ef fect that purpose would be as surely resorted to, as it would be indispensably necessary to the design. That these letters to Mr. Giles were by him communicated to Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams believes. He belices, likewise, that other letters from him to other members of Congress, written during the same session and upon the same subject, were also communicated to him. In one of the letters to Mr. Giles he repeated an assurance which he had verbally given him during the preceding session of Congress, that he had for his support of Mr. Jefferson's administration no personal or interested motive, and no favor to ask of him whatever."

On being called upon in November, 1828, by Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, William Prescott, William Sullivan, and other leading federalists of Massachusetts, to furnish his proofs relative to the charges made by him of a design by the leaders of the federal party in Massachusetts to effect a dissolution of the Union in 1808, Mr. Adams declined to do so at that time, but intimated that at some future day a sense of duty might require him to disclose the evidence which he possessed on the subject. The correspondence was published in Niles's Register, vol. xxxv. In their letter to Mr. Adams, Messrs. Otis and others declare, that "they have never known nor suspected the party which prevailed in Massachusetts in 1808, or any other party in this state, ever entertained the design to produce a dissolution of the Union, or the establishment of a separate confederation."

preventing the execution of the law last enacted for enforcing the embar go. In Connecticut a law was passed to prevent those searches in private houses, which the act of Congress authorized under particular circumstances.*

The administration of Mr. Jefferson terminated on the 3d of March, 1809. He received addresses from the legislatures of the states of Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia, and from the senate of New York, and the house of delegates of Virginia, to serve a third term, but he chose to decline being again a candidate, offering as a reason a desire to conform to the precedent made by General Washington. In his correspondence with his friends at the time, he expressed his gratification at being enabled to retire to private life. After waiting to witness the inauguration of his successor, he left the seat of government for his favorite seat of Monticello.

At the period when Mr. Jefferson resigned the reins of government into the hands of his chosen friend, Mr. Madison, the country was involved in gloom and despondency. A report of a committee of the legislature of Massachusetts, in January, 1809, drew the following picture of the state of the country at that time:

"Our agriculture is discouraged. The fisheries abandoned. Naviga tion forbidden. Our commerce at home restrained, if not annihilated. Our commerce abroad cut off. Our navy sold, dismantled, or degraded to the service of cutters or gunboats. The revenue extinguished. The course of justice interrupted. And the nation weakened by internal animosities and divisions, at the moment when it is unnecessarily and improvidently exposed to war with Great Britain, France, and Spain."

Such were the views of the opponents of Mr. Jefferson's administration, when it was about to close. The principal benefits accomplished by him and his cabinet, during the eight years while the power of the gov ernment was in their hands, as claimed by the friends of Mr. Jefferson, were, first, the acquisition of Louisiana, by which more than a million of square miles were added to the national domain, and the free navigation of the Mississippi secured; which also settled a troublesome and threatening controversy with Spain, and removed the powerful and dangerous neighborhood of France; second, the surveys of the coast and the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clarke, which added greatly to the geographical knowledge of the country; third, the administration had done much to advance the Indians in the arts of civilized life, and had obtained their voluntary relinquishment of their title to ninety-six millions of acres; it had also the merit of compelling the Barbary powers to respect the flag of the United States.

It is also claimed for Mr. Jefferson, by his friends, as stated by his biographer, Professor Tucker, that he gave a practical illustration of the

• Tucker.

great political maxims from which our civil institutions take their shape and derive their force; that government was instituted for the benefit of the governed, and, consequently, that its power is not a property in those who administer it, but a trust for the public good; that as power is grateful in itself, and its exercise always more or less conflicts with the interests or wishes of others, it should be as sparingly delegated and as forbearingly exerted as is consistent with the great purposes of peace and security.

In conformity with these maxims (the same writer remarks), Mr. Jefferson made no attempt, and exhibited no desire to enlarge the powers of the executive, and never exercised them for the benefit of himself or of his family.

The biographer of Mr. Jefferson has not thought proper to define, in the partialities of his friendship, the improvements, if any, which that president introduced, in administering the government, on the system and views of General Washington, nor has he stated in what respects the administration of Washington, and his constructions of the constitution of which he was one of the framers, was not a safe model for his successors. A recent impartial writer, in drawing a parallel between Washington and Jefferson, remarks as follows. It is from a sketch of the life of Thomas Jefferson, published in Philadelphia, by J. G. Russell, 1844:

"The superiority of Washington's statesmanship seems to be shown in the peculiar adaptation of his policy to the special object of the federal constitution, which was the vigor and efficiency of the government, in contradistinction to the laxity of principle and looseness of the parts in the old confederacy. Let us suppose that Mr. Jefferson had been chosen to carry into practice the first experiment of the government, instead of Washington, and that he had applied his system of state-rights and popular interference to the new machine which the federal convention had just placed in the hands of the executive. Is it not self-evident that, for want of vigor and energy, the constitution would have crumbled to pieces in his hands, and left him in possession only of the fragments of the old confederacy? For that is certainly the true system of the government which fulfils its great ends; and that, of course, must be the spurious doctrine which baffles and defeats the object had in view by those who framed it. The difference in the crisis, and the remote stages of the two administrations can not affect this principle. A government of laws must have the principle of energy and coercion; and it was the concentration of this energy in a federal government which the convention gave, and which, to carry out into perfection, induced the Washington policy. It does appear, therefore, that Mr. Jefferson's was anomalous and not congenial to the constitution, but a policy formed in accordance with the constant and living current of popular opinion; a policy for the people, not for the constitution; a policy framed to gain popularity, not to cement, fulfil, or con

summate the fabric and purposes of the government. It appears, therefore, to be rather the policy of the politician than the policy of the statesman, the legislator, the lawgiver, or the patriot, who looks beyond the bounds of present praise to the final consequences of civilization and liberty. Yet even this anomalous policy of Mr. Jefferson, so far from being incompatible with human happiness and permanent freedom, is admirably calculated to secure those objects, provided the people are sufficiently virtuous to be governed by opinion instead of law. It implies, in the people, the highest perfection of virtue and intelligence, and, leaving nothing to coercion, places the safety of society at the mercy of their discretion, wisdom, prudence, and virtue. It implies that power will be so honest as to commit no usurpation, and that the people will be so virtuous as to abstain from all violence, licentiousness, and disorder! but this is supposing the very effect that government is intended to secure. We have many declarations under Mr. Jefferson's pen, which show that he had not considered the scientific principles of his system so profoundly as he had studied its impression on the minds of the people; and seeing it well received by them, he determined to adhere to it. So that in effect there was this difference in Washington and Jefferson, as statesmen-that the former rescued the republic from the chaos of the old confederation to the coercive government of the federal constitution, and the latter reconducted us to the chaos of the confederacy through the currents of popular opinion, ideas of unbounded liberty, implicit confidence in the virtues of the people, and an unlimited faith in their intelligence, and capacity for self-government."