Chauncey Goodrich, and the Hon. Daniel Lyman, or any two of them, be authorized to call another meeting of this convention, to be holden in Boston, at any time before new delegates shall be chosen, as recommended in the above resolution, if in their judgment the situation of the country shall urgently require it.

ACTION OF TOWNS

Amherst adopted the following Resolution Jan. 3, 1814, Noah Webster presiding :

That the representatives of this town in the General Court are desired to use their influence to induce that honorable body to take the most vigorous and decisive measures compatible with the Constitution to put an end to this hopeless war, and to restore to us the blessings of peace. What measures it will be proper to take, we pretend not to prescribe; but whatever measures they shall think it expedient to adopt, either separately or in conjunction with the neighboring States, they may rely upon our faithful support.

Newbury, a town in Pickering's district, voted that: We remember the resistance of our fathers to oppressions which dwindle into insignificance when compared with those which we are called on to endure. The rights "which we have received from God we will never yield to man." We call on our State legislature to protect us in the enjoyment of those privileges to assert which our fathers died, and to defend which we profess ourselves ready to resist unto blood. We pray your honorable body to adopt measures immediately to secure to us especially our undoubted right of trade within our State. We are ourselves ready to aid you in securing it to us to the utmost of our power, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must"; and we pledge to

you the sacrifice of our lives and property in support of whatever measures the dignities and liberties of this free, sovereign, and independent State may seem to your wisdom to demand.

It has been suggested that Pickering was himself the author of several of these fulminations.

THE

HE era of factions as we have seen began as soon as the Union was formed. It continued through the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. The English party and the French party, with constantly shifting degrees of zeal, divided the people. Other questions complicated matters, but at the bottom it was, down to the war of 1812-14, a factious antagonism between those who would submit to English imposition and those who would not. New England had been the stronghold of the English faction not only because it was New England, but because it had so far been, not a manufacturing, but a trading section, and its trade was in the main with Great Britain. The second war with England had ended in such a manner as to greatly foster national unity, and to lessen sympathy for the power we had twice crippled. Unification and homogeneity of sentiment had been vastly increased by the wise and generous administration of Jefferson. Monroe's administration, extending from 1816 to 1824, was the era of calm and peace. Federalism, dead as a party, was now also Idead as a factional issue. The Spanish faction was assimilated. The English faction had faded out.

There was at last an American people rapidly becoming autonomous. The colonies had become cemented into a nation. The process of opening great turnpikes and canals was going on with rapidity, to connect the different sections. Calhoun and Webster and Clay were soon to be the leaders at Washington, in place of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. They were not Federalists; neither were they Republicans.

During all the era of factionalism there had been more or less also of sectionalism. It had at times shown a vicious readiness for making disturbance. It entered strongly into the attempts of New England to secede. Still it had been possible to elect peaceably four out of the first five Presidents from Virginia. Monroe, the last of these, was as popular in New England as in the Carolinas. Jefferson had met Adams half way, and their last days were of one mind,—till their spirits flew away together as a symbol of national harmony. The fact was that through all this period the Federalists were for the most part right-hearted while they were wrong-headed. We were sons of England. Blood is thicker than water. We never intended to give up our Anglo-Saxon heritage, or our English language. To pull the root of our institutions out of English life and history we could not if we would. Our instincts, our prejudices, our vices, and our virtues were of the English stock. The only trouble was that England had not yet learned to meet her children as part and parcel of herself. The paternalism that made her hold the rod over us must be given up. The Federalists had been inclined to submit to the rod; the Republicans refused.

In 1823 occurred the final act in this era of faction. It was the more welcome that it was unexpected.

Through the Napoleonic wars with England we had suffered outrage and spoliation from both powers, because of our neutrality. But Napoleon was at last dead in his cage at St. Helena, and the European despots were restored to their thrones. A coalition of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, called the Holy Alliance, was formed to sweep out of Europe all remnants of popular government. Dei gratia was once more the watchword; the people were to be ruled in the name of God, both in state and church. Louis XVIII. of France although not of the Alliance was of the same temper. While he suppressed popular government in Naples he marched his armies into Spain and restored the Bourbons. A conference was summoned to meet at Paris to consider next the condition of affairs in America. The SouthAmerican dependencies of Spain had revolted and set up republics. The despots proposed to reduce these, and divide them among themselves. This could not have been done without fatal consequences to the United States. The battle was being drawn between popular government and legitimacy. It took in all the world. The odds were terribly against republicanism and freedom. Castlereagh had committed England to the legitimists. But Castlereagh committed suicide, and Canning was called to the ministry.

Now occurred what was truly the greatest event of the nineteenth century. Canning refused to send delegates to Paris; and instead turned to the United States and said, "The hour has come when once more we must stand together." To the legitimists he said: "Your opinion that all power is derived from Godappointed monarchs strikes at the fundamental principle of the British constitution. It is false. We will not deny that all power originates with the people."