this country will never consent to give up their navigation, and every administration will find themselves constrained to provide means to protect their commerce.

He did not undertake to state, that it was a | ships, or sailors, or merchants? The people of wanton war, or provoked by the government. He did not even venture to deny, that it was a war of defence, and entered into in order to protect our brethren on the frontiers from the bloody scalping-knife and murderous tomahawk of the savage. What ought the government to have done? Ought they to have estimated the value of the blood, which probably would be shed, and the amount of the devastation likely to be committed, before they determined on resistance? They raised an army, and after great expense and various fortune, they have secured the peace and safety of the frontiers. But why was the army mentioned on this occasion, unless to forewarn us of the fate which awaits them, and to tell us, that their days are numbered? I cannot suppose that the gentleman mentioned this little army, distributed on a line of three thousand miles, for the purpose of giving alarm to three hundred thousand free and brave yeomanry, ever ready to defend the liberties of the country.

has none.

The honorable gentleman proceeded to inform the committee, that the government, availing itself of the depredations of the Algerines, created a navy. Did the gentleman mean to insinuate, that this war was invited by the United States? Has he any documents or proof to render the suspicion colorable? No, sir, he He well knows, that the Algerine aggressions were extremely embarrassing to the government. When they commenced, we had no marine force to oppose to them. We had no harbors or places of shelter in the Mediterranean. A war with these pirates could be attended with neither honor nor profit. It might cost a great deal of blood, and in the end it might be feared, that a contest so far from home, subject to numberless hazards and difficulties, could not be maintained. What would gentlemen have had the government to do? I know there are those who are ready to answer-abandon the Mediterranean trade. But would this have done? The corsairs threatened to pass the Straits, and were expected in the Atlantic. Nay, sir, it was thought that our very coasts would not have been secure?

In respect to the Algerines, the late administrations were singularly unfortunate. They were obliged to fight or pay them. The true policy was to hold a purse in one hand and a sword in the other. This was the policy of the government. Every commercial nation in Europe was tributary to these petty barbarians. It was not esteemed disgraceful. It was an affair of calculation, and the administration made the best bargain in their power. They have heretofore been scandalized for paying tribute to a pirate, and now they are criminated for preparing a few frigates to protect our citizens from slavery and chains. Sir, I believe on this and many other occasions, if the finger of heaven had pointed out a course, and the government had pursued it, yet that they would not have escaped the censure and reproaches of their enemies.

We were told, that the disturbances in Europe were made a pretext for augmenting the army and navy. I will not, Mr. Chairman, at present go into a detailed view of the events which compelled the government to put on the armor of defence, and to resist by force the French aggressions. All the world know the efforts which were made to accomplish an amicable adjustment of differences with that power. It is enough to state, that ambassadors of peace were twice repelled from the shores of France with ignominy and contempt. It is enough to say, that it was not till after we had drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs, that the national spirit was roused to a manly resolution to depend only on their God and their own courage for protection. What, sir, did it grieve the gentleman, that we did not crouch under the rod of the Mighty Nation, and like the petty powers of Europe, tamely surrender our independence? Would he have had the people of the United States relinquish without a struggle those liberties which had cost so much blood and treasure? We had not, sir, recourse to arms, till the mouths of our rivers were chok

Will gentlemen go farther and say, that the United States ought to relinquish their com-ed merce? I believe this opinion has high authority to support it. It has been said, that we ought to be only cultivators of the earth, and make the nations of Europe our carriers.

This is not an occasion to examine the solidity of this opinion; but I will only ask, admitting the administration were disposed to turn the pursuits of the people of this country from the ocean to the land, whether there is a power in the government, or whether there would be, if we were as strong as the government of Turkey, or even of France, to accomplish the object? With a sea-coast of seventeen hundred miles, with innumerable harbors and inlets, with a people enterprising beyond example, is it possible to say, you will have no

with French corsairs; till our shores, and every harbor, were insulted and violated; till our commercial capital had been seized, and no safety existed for the remainder but the protection of force. At this moment, a noble enthusiasm electrized the country: the national pulse beat high, and we were prepared to submit to every sacrifice, determined only, that our independence should be the last. At that time, an American was a proud name in Europe; but I fear, much I fear, that in the course we are now likely to pursue, the time will soon arrive, when our citizens abroad will be ashamed to acknowledge their country.

The measures of '98 grew out of the public feelings. They were loudly demanded by the public voice. It was the people who drove

the government to arms, and not as the gentleman expressed it, the government which pushed the people to the X. Y. Z. of their political designs before they understood the A. B. C. of their political principles.

because their power depends upon it, but I believe they respect no existing establishment of the government, and if public opinion could be brought to support them, I have no doubt they would annihilate the whole. I shall at present only say further on this head, that we thought the reorganization of the judicial system an useful measure, and we considered it as a duty to employ the remnant of our power to the best advantage of the country.

we had heard the thundering voice of the people which dismissed us from their service, we erected a judiciary, which we expected would afford us the shelter of an inviolable sanctuary. The gentleman is deceived. We knew better, sir, But what, sir, did the gentleman mean by the characters who were to succeed us, and we his X. Y. Z. I must look for something very knew that nothing was sacred in the eyes of significant, something more than a quaintness infidels. No, sir, I never had a thought that of expression, or a play upon words, in what any thing belonging to the federal government, falls from a gentleman of his learning and abil- was holy in the eyes of those gentlemen. Í ity. Did he mean that the despatches which could never, therefore, imagine that a sanctuary contained those letters were impostures, design- | could be built up which would not be violated. ed to deceive and mislead the people of Amer-I believe these gentlemen regard public opinion ica? Intended to rouse a false spirit not justified by events? Though the gentleman had no respect for some of the characters of that embassy; though he felt no respect for the chief justice, or the gentleman appointed from South Carolina, two characters as pure, as honorable, and exalted, as any the country can boast of, yet, I should have expected that he would have felt some tenderness for Mr. Gerry, in whom his party had since given proofs of undiminished confidence. Does the gentleman believe that Mr. Gerry would have joined in the deception, and assisted in fabricating a tale which was to blind his countrymen, and to enable the government to destroy their liberties? Sir, I will not avail myself of the equivocations or confessions of Talleyrand himself; I say these gentlemen will not dare publicly to deny what is attested by the hand and seal of Mr. Gerry. The truth of these despatches admitted, what was your government to do? Give us, say the Directory, one million two hundred thousand livres for our own purse, and purchase fifteen millions of dollars of Dutch debt, which was worth nothing, and we will receive your min-ings which it enjoys. isters and negotiate for peace.

The honorable gentleman expressed his joy that the constitution had at last become sacred in our eyes; that we formerly held that it meant every thing or nothing. I believe, sir, that the constitution formerly appeared different in our eyes from what it now appears in the eyes of the dominant party. We formerly saw in it the principles of a fair and goodly creation. We looked upon it as a source of peace, of safety, of honor, and of prosperity to the country. But now the view is changed; it is the instrument of wild and dark destruction. It is a weapon which is to prostrate every establishment, to which the nation owes the unexampled bless

The present state of the country is an unanIt was only left to the government to choose swerable commentary upon our construction between an unconditional surrender of the hon- of the constitution. It is true that we made it or and independence of the country, or a manly mean much, and I hope, sir, we shall not be resistance. Can you blame, sir, the adminis-taught by the present administration that it can tration for a line of conduct, which has reflect-mean even worse than nothing.

ed on the nation so much honor, and to which, The gentleman has not confined his animadunder God, it owes its present prosperity.

These are the events of the general government, which the gentleman has reviewed in succession, and endeavored to render odious or suspicious. For all this, I could have forgiven him, but there is one thing for which I will not, I cannot forgive him. I mean his attempt to disturb the ashes of the dead; to disturb the ashes of the great and good Washington. Sir, I might degrade by attempting to eulogize this illustrious character. The work is infinitely beyond my powers. I will only say that as long as exalted talents and virtues confer honor among men, the name of Washington will be held in veneration.

After, Mr. Chairman, the honorable member had exhausted one quiver of arrows against the late executive, he opened another, equally poisoned, against the judiciary. He has told as, sir, that when the power of the government vas rapidly passing from federal hands, after

versions to the individual establishment, but has gone so far as to make the judges the subject of personal invective. They have been charged with having transgressed the bounds of judicial duty, and become the apostles of a political sect. We have heard of their travelling about the country for little other purpose than to preach the federal doctrines to the people.

Sir, I think a judge should never be a partisan. No man would be more ready to condemn a judge who carried his political prejudices or antipathies on the bench. But I have still to learn that such a charge can be sustained against the judges of the United States.

The constitution is the supreme law of the land, and they have taken pains, in their charges to grand juries, to unfold and explain its principles. Upon similar occasions, they have enumerated the laws which compose our criminal code, and when some of those laws have been denounced by the enemies of the administration as uncon

stitutional, the judges may have felt themselves | this abuse of power, I view them as the proper

called upon to express their judgments upon that point, and the reasons of their opinions.

So far, but no further, I believe the judges have gone; in going thus far, they have done nothing more than faithfully discharge their duty.

But if, sir, they have offended against the constitution or laws of the country, why are they not impeached? The gentleman now holds the sword of justice; the judges are not a privileged order, they have no shelter but their innocence.

But in any view are the sins of the former judges to be fastened upon the new judicial system? Would you annihilate a system, because some men under part of it had acted wrong? The constitution has pointed out a mode of punishing and removing the men, and does not leave this miserable pretext for the wanton exercise of powers which is now contemplated.

The honorable member has thought himself justified in making a charge of a serious and frightful nature against the judges. They have been represented going about searching out victims of the sedition law. But no fact has been stated; no proof has been adduced, and the gentleman must excuse me for refusing my belief to the charge till it is sustained by stronger and better ground than assertion.

objects of national sympathy and commiseration. Among the causes of impeachment against the judges, is their attempt to force the sovereignties of the States to bow before them. We have heard them called an ambitious body politic; and the fact I allude to has been considered as full proof of the inordinate ambition of the body.

Allow me to say, sir, the gentleman knows too much, not to know that the judges are not a body politic. He supposed, perhaps, there was an odium attached to the appellation, which it might serve his purposes to connect with the judges. But, sir, how do you derive any evidence of the ambition of the judges, from their decision, that the States under our federal compact were compellable to do justice? Can it be shown, or even said, that the judgment of the court was a false construction of the constitution? The policy of later times, on this point, has altered the constitution, and in my opinion, has obliterated its fairest feature. I am taught by my principles, that no power ought to be superior to justice. It is not, that I wish to see the States humbled in dust and ashes; it is not, that I wish to see the pride of any man flattered by their degradation; but it is, that I wish to see the great and the small, the sovereign and the subject, bow at the altar of justice, and submit to those obligations from If, however, Mr. Chairman, the eyes of the which the Deity himself is not exempt. What gentleman are delighted with victims, if objects was the effect of this provision in the constituof misery are grateful to his feelings, let me tion? It prevented the States being the judges turn his view from the walks of the judges to in their own cause, and deprived them of the the track of the present executive. It is in this power of denying justice. Is there a principle path we see the real victims of stern, unchari- of ethics more clear, than that a man ought not table, unrelenting power. It is here, sir, we to be a judge in his own cause? and is not the see the soldier who fought the battles of the principle equally strong, when applied not to Revolution; who spilt his blood and wasted one man, but to a collective body? It was the his strength to establish the independence of happiness of our situation which enabled us to his country, deprived of the reward of his ser-force the greatest State to submit to the yoke vices, and left to pine in penury and wretched- of justice, and it would have been the glory of ness. It is along this path that you may see the country in the remotest times, if the prinhelpless children crying for bread, and gray ciple in the constitution had been maintained. hairs sinking in sorrow to the grave! It is What had the States to dread? Could they here that no innocence, no merit, no truth, no fear injustice, when opposed to a feeble indiservices, can save the unhappy sectary who vidual? Has a great man reason to fear from a does not believe in the creed of those in power. poor one? And could a potent State be alarmI have been forced upon this subject, and be- ed by the unfounded claim of a single person? fore I leave it, allow me to remark, that with- For my part, I have always thought, that an out inquiring into the right of the President to independent tribunal ought to be provided, to make vacancies in office, during the recess of judge on the claims against this government. the Senate, but admitting the power to exist, The power ought not to be in our own hands. yet that it never was given by the constitution We are not impartial, and are therefore liable, to enable the chief magistrate to punish the in- without our knowledge, to do wrong. I never sults, to revenge the wrongs, or to indulge the could see why the whole community should not antipathies of the man. If the discretion ex-be bound by as strong an obligation to do jusists, I have no hesitation in saying that it is tice to an individual, as one man is bound to do abused when exercised from any other motives it to another. than the public good. And when I see the will of a President precipitating from office, men of probity, knowledge, and talents, against whom the community has no complaint, I consider it as a wanton and dangerous abuse of power. And when I see men who have been the victims of

In England, the subject has a better chance for justice against the sovereign, than in this country a citizen has against a State. The Crown is never its own arbiter, and they who sit in judgment, have no interest in the event of their decision

How

The judges, sir, have been criminated for their children. Let me say, that this same their conduct in relation to the sedition act, common law, now so much despised and viliand have been charged with searching for vic-fied, is the cradle of the rights and liberties tims who were sacrificed under it. The charge which we now enjoy. It is to the common is easily made, but has the gentleman the means law we owe our distinction from the colonists of supporting it? It was the evident design of of France, of Portugal, and of Spain. the gentleman to attach the odium of the sedi- long is it since we have discovered the maligtion law to the judiciary; on this score the nant qualities which are now ascribed to this judges are surely innocent. They did not pass law? Is there a State in the Union, which has the act; the legislature made the law, and they not adopted it, and in which it is not in force? were obliged, by their oaths, to execute it. The Why is it refused to the federal constitution? judges decided the law to be constitutional, and Upon the same principle, that every power is I am not now going to agitate the question. I denied which tends to invigorate the governdid hope, when the law passed, that its effect ment. Without this law the constitution bewould be useful. It did not touch the freedom comes, what perhaps many gentlemen wish to of speech, and was designed only to restrain see it, a dead letter. the enormous abuses of the press. It went no further than to punish malicious falsehoods, published with the wicked intention of destroying the government. No innocent man ever did, or could have suffered under the law. No punishment could be inflicted, till a jury was satisfied, that a publication was false, and that the party charged, knowing it to be false, had published it with an evil design.

The misconduct of the judges, however, on this subject, has been considered by the gentleman the more aggravated, by an attempt to extend the principles of the sedition act, by an adoption of those of the common law. Connected with this subject, such an attempt was never made by the judges. They have held, generally, that the Constitution of the United States was predicated upon an existing common law. Of the soundness of that opinion, I never had a doubt. I should scarcely go too far, were I to say, that, stripped of the common law, there would be neither constitution nor government. The constitution is unintelligible without reference to the common law. And were we to go into our courts of justice, with the mere statutes of the United States, not a step could be taken, not even a contempt could be punished. Those statutes prescribe no forms of pleadings; they contain no principles of evidence; they furnish no rule of property. If the common law does not exist in most cases, there is no law but the will of the judge.

For ten years it has been the doctrine of our courts, that the common law was in force, and yet can gentlemen say, that there has been a victim who has suffered under it? Many have experienced its protection, none can complain of its oppression.

In order to demonstrate the aspiring ambition of this body politic, the judiciary, the honorable gentleman stated, with much emphasis and feeling, that the judges had been hardy enough to send their mandate into the executive cabinet. Was the gentleman, sir, acquainted with the fact, when he made this statement? It differs essentially from what I know I have heard upon the subject. I shall be allowed to state the fact.

Several commissions had been made out by the late administration, for justices of the peace of this territory. The commissions were complete; they were signed and sealed, and left with the clerks of the office of State, to be handed to the persons appointed. The new administration found them on the clerk's table, and thought proper to withhold them. These officers are not dependent on the will of the President. The persons named in the commissions considered that their appointments were complete, and that the detention of their commissions was a wrong, and not justified by the legitimate authority of the executive. They applied to the Supreme Court for a rule upon the Secretary of State, to show cause why a I have never contended, that the whole of mandamus should not issue, commanding him the common law attached to the constitution, to deliver up the commissions. Let me ask, sir, but only such parts as were consonant to the what could the judges do? The rule to show nature and spirit of our government. We have cause was a matter of course upon a new point, nothing to do with the law of the ecclesiastical at the least doubtful. To have denied it would establishment, nor with any principle of mo- have been to shut the doors of justice against narchical tendency. What belongs to us, and the parties. It concludes nothing, neither the what is unsuitable, is a question for the sound jurisdiction nor the regularity of the act. The discretion of the judges. The principle is ana-judges did their duty; they gave an honorable logous to one which is found in the writings of proof of their independence. They listened to all jurists and commentators. When a colony the complaint of an individual against your is planted, it is established subject to such parts President, and have shown themselves disposed of the law of the mother country as are appli- to grant redress against the greatest man in the cable to its situation. When our forefathers government. If a wrong has been committed, colonized the wilderness of America, they and the constitution authorizes their interfebrought with them the common law of Eng-rence, will gentlemen say that the Secretary of land. They claimed it as their birthright, and State or even the President, is not subject to they left it as the most valuable inheritance to law? And if they violate the law, where can