CHAP. V.]

MEETING OF CONGRESS.

251

part of the President. They were considered-as we shall have occasion to see-a forcible deprivation of an official tenure where the incumbent properly had a right standing on nearly the same footing with the vested right of an elective officer. And removal for a difference of opinion violated the theory which General Washington had carried into practice that the Cabinet was an independent body of Executive counsellors. It required gross outrages against decency to drive the second President to resort to this constitutional prerogative, now by common consent optionally exercised.

It will be marked in the preceding quotation, that Mr. Jefferson-never accused of withholding anything in his private writings, and least of all in the Ana-imputes no change of principles, no desire to enter upon any new line of action in respect to parties, to the President.

The second session of the third Congress was to have opened on the 3d of November, 1794, but it was upwards of two weeks before a quorum of the Senate assembled. Most of the opening speech of the President (on the 19th) was taken up in detailing the proceedings in reference to the insurrection in western Pennsylvania. These were dilated upon in a very animated tone, and the intimation several times thrown out that the insurgents were aided or encouraged by outside influences. Some of these intimations were general, and others more specific. In one place the President said:

"The very forbearance to press prosecutions was misinterpreted into a fear of urging the execution of the laws, and associations of men began to denounce threats against the officers employed. From a belief that, by a more formal concert, their operation' might be defeated, certain self-created societies assumed the tone of condemnation."

Again:

"When in the calm moments of reflection, they shall have retraced the origin and progress of insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance of or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government."

The Senate, after a sharp debate, endorsed the President

1I. e. the operation of the laws.

view of the "self-created," or, in other words, democratic societies, in their answer to the speech.' The reply of the House originally contained no allusion to it, but Fitzsimmons moved an amendment denouncing these societies. Giles, Nicholas, Lyman, and McDowell insisted that the censure would include all voluntary associations. All the leading Republicans, however, utterly disclaimed any connection with. the reprobated societies. Giles opened his remarks with a warm tribute to the President's character. To force the Republicans into a direct issue with the President, Fitzsimmons changed his amendment into nearly a repetition of the language employed in the opening speech. A fiery debate ensued. Sedgwick supported the amendment in a vehement strain. Giles as sharply retorted. He claimed that many members of the democratic societies had marched among the troops sent to quell the disturbances they were accused of having fomented. A motion to strike out the words "self-created societies" passed the Committee of the whole by forty-seven against forty-five; but the vote was exactly reversed in the House (November 27th), the Chairman of the Committee and the Speaker voting on different sides of the question. The Republicans, however, immediately carried a motion to make the censure apply only to the "selfcreated societies" in "the four western counties of Pennsylvania and parts adjacent." But nineteen members voted for the amended amendment; and the address finally passed without any mention of "self-created societies."

Notwithstanding the heat of these discussions, and the obvious attempt of the Federalists to draw the Republicans into an attitude of direct hostility to the Executive, it is recorded by Judge Marshall that "the speech of the President was treated with marked respect; and the several subjects which it recommended engaged the immediate attention of Congress.' The House passed an act for raising the sum of one million one. hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars to defray the expenses

The answer of the Senate contained the following:

"Our anxiety arising from the licentious and open resistance to the laws in the western counties of Pennsylvania, has been increased by the proceedings of certain selfcreated societies, relative to the laws and administration of the Government-proceedings, in our apprehension, founded in political error, calculated, if not intended, to disorganize our Government; and which, by inspiring delusive hopes of support, have been influential in misleading our fellow citizens in the scene of insurrection."

2 Life of Washington, vol. ii. p. 354.

CHAP. V.]

JEFFERSON'S FEELINGS.

253

of the expedition into western Pennsylvania; authorizing the President to continue to maintain a force there according to his suggestion; and appropriating something over one hundred thousand dollars for that object. The acquiescence of the Republicans in this last measure was due rather to their respect for Washington and their disinclination perhaps to come in collision with his immense popularity on such an issue, than from any conviction of its necessity.

To the feelings of no one had the President's official censure of the democratic societies given a ruder shock than to Mr. Jef ferson's. He looked upon it as the whole body of the American people would now look upon a denunciation, in the annual message of the Executive, of any of those thousand political societies which are daily starting into existence and assuming a "tone of condemnation" towards the rulers or measures of the hour. Sixty years since, governments were not as practised as at present to the fiery criticisms of the press and of popular discussion. In the light of present experience, one smiles to find General Washington writing a correspondent that "no one denies the right of the people to meet occasionally to petition for, or remonstrate against, any act of the Legislature;" but that he thought that "for a self-created permanent body to declare this act is unconstitutional, and that act pregnant with mischiefs," etc., was "a stretch of arrogant presumption;"1 and writing another correspondent that he was perfectly convinced "that if these self-created societies cannot be discountenanced, they will destroy the Government of the country.""

In a day when precedents were being established which were to determine the practical line of demarkation between popular rights and governmental authority, Jefferson did not regard this as a matter to furnish amusement. His jealousies all lay on the other side. In a sharp and angry letter to Madison (December 28th), he thus commented on the Executive denunciation, and on the Pennsylvania proceedings:

"The denunciation of the democratic societies is one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of Monocrats. It is

See his letter to Burgess Ball, Sparks's Washington, vol. x. p. 437.

Letter to E. Randolph, Sparks's Washington, vol. x. p. 444, and see also same,

pp. 426. 429, 437, 440, 443, 454.

wonderful, indeed, that the President should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing and publishing. It must be a matter of rare curiosity to get at the modifications of these rights proposed by them, and to see what line their ingenuity would draw between democratical societies, whose avowed object is the nourishment of the Republican principles of our Constitution, and the society of the Cincinnati, a self-created one, carving out for itself hereditary distinctions, lowering over our Constitution eternally, meeting together in all parts of the Union, periodically, with closed doors, accumulating a capital in their separate treasury, corresponding secretly and regularly, and of which society the very persons denouncing the Democrats are themselves the fathers, founders and high officers. Their sight must be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets, not to see the extravagance of the proposition to suppress the friends of general freedom, while those who wish to confine that freedom to the few, are permitted to go on in their principles and practices. I here put out of sight the persons whose misbehavior has been taken advantage of to slander the friends of popular rights; and I am happy to observe, that as far as the circle of my observation and information extends, everybody has lost sight of them, and views the abstract attempt on their natural and constitutional rights in all its nakedness. I have never heard, or heard of, a single expression or opinion which did not condemn it as an inexcusable aggression. And with respect to the transactions against the Excise law, it appears to me that you are all swept away in the torrent of governmental opinions, or that we do not know what these transactions have been. We know of none which, according to the definitions of the law, have been anything more than riotous. There was indeed a meeting to consult about a separation. But to consult on a question does not amount to a determination of that question in the affirmative, still less to the acting on such a determination; but we shall see, I suppose, what the court lawyers, and courtly judges, and would-be ambassadors will make of it. The Excise law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it by the Constitution; the second, to act on that admission; the third and last will be, to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union, and setting us all afloat to choose what part of it we will adhere to. The information of our militia, returned from the westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the Excise law is universal, and has now associated to it a detestation of the Government; and that separation, which, perhaps, was a very distant and problematical event, is now near, and certain, and determined in the mind of every man. I expected to have seen some justification of arming one part of the society against another; of declaring a civil war the moment before the meeting of that body which has the sole right of declaring war; of being so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies, and rising at a feather against our friends; of adding a million to the public debt and deriding us with recommendations to pay it if we can, etc., etc. But the part of the speech which was to be taken as a justification of the armament, reminded me of Parson Saunders's demonstration why minus into minus makes plus. After a parcel of shreds of stuff from Esop's fables and Tom Thumb, he jumps all at once into his ergo, minus multiplied into minus makes plus. Just so the fifteen thousand men enter after the fables, in the speech."

CHAP. V.]

He added:

DECLINES PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION.

255

"However, the time is coming when we shall fetch up the leeway of our vessel. The changes in your House, I see, are going on for the better, and even the Augean herd over your heads are slowly purging off their impurities. Hold on, then, my dear friend, that we may not shipwreck in the meanwhile. I do not see, in the minds of those with whom I converse, a greater affliction than the fear of your retirement; but this must not be, unless to a more splendid and a more efficacious post. There I should rejoice to see you; I hope I may say, I shall rejoice to see you. I have long had much in my mind to say to you on that subject. But double delicacies have kept me silent. I ought, perhaps, to say, while I would not give up my own retirement for the empire of the universe, how I can justify wishing one whose happiness I have so much at heart as yours, to take the front of the battle which is fighting for my security. This would be easy enough to be done, but not at the heel of a lengthy epistle.

"Present me respectfully to Mrs. Madison, and pray her to keep you where you are for her own satisfaction and the public good, and accept the cordial affections of us all. Adieu."

This is the outspoken and severe language of a confidential letter; but it could not be properly passed over in tracing its author's political history.

The inference which would be drawn from one of the above remarks, that Jefferson conceded there had been "misbehavior" on the part of the democratic societies, is an entirely correct one. While he believed that American citizens were entitled “occasionally," or in "permanent bodies," purely at their own option, to meet and discuss the conduct of their Government, and denounce its measures if they saw fit, he had no connection with those societies, and very little sympathy for the manner in which many, if not most of them, had conducted themselves. Latterly, such men Latterly, such men as the Rittenhouses and Duponceaus had ceased to take part in them, and they had mostly subsided into gatherings of those ultra-French sympathizers who had defended Genet in all, or nearly all, his acts. They had rapidly culminated, and almost as rapidly waned. The French Minister who succeeded Genet, M. Fauchet, did not follow his predecessor's example in countenancing them. The Reign of Terror in France had put the imitation of French clubs out of fashion among sensible men. The notice drawn upon them by the Executive and Senatorial censure, and the debate in the House, gave these organizations a fading ray of importance, but it soon went out, and they sunk into contempt and disappeared.