All this was pitching the key too high for the mechanics and yeomanry of Massachusetts; and not only was Gerry reelected but the Republicans gained control of both branches of the legislature.

June.

The "Boston resolutions" were severely censured by the administration press outside New England; and Gerry himself, in an executive message, exposed their pernicious tendency. Unfortunately for his own popularity, as it turned out, the Massachusetts Republicans used their power vindictively. Two Boston banks, whose charters were about to expire, were replaced by a new State institution, with a capital of $3,000,000, and incorporators of the Republican creed. The inferior State courts were reorganized, that the Governor might use the besom upon the Tory incumbents. Innovation laid its hand, for the first time, upon the parish taxes, which had fed the Congregational clergy, those constant maligners of Jefferson.* But Gerry was injured most of all by an act of his new legislature, at an adjourned session, which rearranged the senatorial districts of the State, with the view of perpetuating the party majority in the upper branch. "Gerrymandering," as the Federalists nicknamed it, was then a novel process in our politics, since only too familiar.t

that Napoleon's pretended relaxation of his decrees was both illusory and insulting; that neither the President nor Congress had been justified in changing our relative connection with the belligerents; that every citizen has a right to construe the conditions of May, 1810, as unfulfilled and to govern his conduct hereafter accordingly; that the recent statute of March 2d is "unjust, oppressive, and tyrannical," tending to the ruin and impoverishment of meritorious citizens, and "that the only means short of an appeal to force to prevent such a calamity (which heaven avert) is the election of such men to the various offices in the State government as will oppose by peaceable but firm measures the execution of laws which, if persisted in, must and will be resisted."

Mr. Lowell introduced these resolutions (but probably was not their author), and Quincy and Otis were the chief orators of the meeting.

* Jefferson applauded Gerry for the "rasping" with which he rubbed down his "herd of traitors." "Let them have justice and protection against personal violence," he wrote to Dearborn, "but no favor."-Jefferson's Works, August, 1811.

† 6 Hildreth, 249, 287. For a picture and full description of this

1811.

EASTERN PEACE PARTY.

325

In Connecticut, where Republicans fused with the Federalists who had broken from patriarchal rule, Griswold defeated his old line competitor, Treadwell. But the complexion of politics did not change in consequence. Respectable citizens of New Haven memorialized the legislature to use May. its influence towards a repeal of the non-importation act, and to oppose, as far as its constitutional powers might extend, every attempt of the national government to restrain the commerce of the State. They sent, also, a remonstrance, headed by Hillhouse, to the President, and received from Madison a soothing but not compliant response.*

Langdon was re-elected in New Hampshire; and the Republicans made De Witt Clinton lieutenant-governor of New York, and Galusha governor of Vermont. A moderate Federalist was chosen as executive of Rhode Island.

Foreign relations did not improve during the recess. George III was convalescent, and the Regency, of whose favor some hope had been entertained, faded out. Pinkney, having ascertained explicitly, after fruitless interviews, that May.

the Orders in Council would continue unchanged,

took his departure from London, leaving a chargé in his place. By this time, however, a new minister plenipotentiary was ready to depart for America, Augustus J. Foster, late the British chargé in Sweden, and one whose appointment was personally agreeable. Foster's mission tended certainly to conciliation on one point: he brought authority to atone for the stale outrage of the Chesapeake. This atonement, as offered and accepted, was upon the same terms as Erskine's futile adjustment. Great Britain disavowed the wrong, the survivors were restored to the deck of the vessel from which they had

"Gerrymander," which preserves the Governor's patronymic to our vocabulary, see Lossing's War of 1812, p. 210.

* Newspapers of the day; Madison's Writings, June 1811. "Lucius" argued in the Boston Centinel, in May, that it was better to sunder the States than submit to a system of laws whose only object was to annihilate commerce.

been forcibly taken,* and pecuniary provision was made for the wounded and the families of the slain.†

But to yield too slowly, and too little at a time, for establishing generous intercourse, was still the characteristic trait of British diplomacy. As for repealing the Orders in Council, the British minister maintained: (1) that France had compelled those decrees in retaliation for the British; (2) that there had been no genuine revocation of the French decrees; (3) that to lay the foundation for a British repeal, commerce must be restored to a fenting that would admit British productions and manufactures into markets now shut against them by France. No disposition appeared to take the road of retreat opened by our act of March 2d, but, on the contrary, Foster intimated that if non-intercourse continued against England she would retaliate. Monroe exposed the shallowness of the pretension that the United States, a neutral nation, was bound to assert against one belligerent an obligation to open her markets to the products of the other before her rights could be respected. Indeed, the most devoted champions of Great Britain on this side of the Atlantic could give no countenance to such a theory, which was tantamount to keeping the British Orders in force as long as Britain's war with France lasted. The United States asked only to have its own trade respected on either side, and Bonaparte's internal system was not a proper subject for neutral dictation.

Bonaparte had, in fact, and not without provocation, taken the most rigorous measures for excluding British importations from the Continent. Notwithstanding Orders in Council and pretended blockades, British licenses had been granted quite liberally of late in order to enable American vessels, by means of false papers, to land British goods at distant points, whence they could be smuggled into the heart of Europe. Notwithstanding immense hazards, this illicit trade enriched both carrier and shipper. British manufacturers pursued it so keenly that the American flag was constantly prostituted in the north

*The scene of this restoration was Boston Harbor, June 13th, 1812. Of the four tars taken, one had been hung, another had since died.Niles's Register.

† Executive Documents, October 30th -November 12th, 1811.

1811.

NAPOLEON AND OUR COMMERCE.

327

seas of Europe. All concerned in the Baltic trade knew well that most of the English ships which had gone to the ports of Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, during the past two years, sailed with false papers and under American colors. Those powers had remonstrated, and Napoleon declared that the commerce should cease. His privateers ravaged the northern seas, therefore, under little restraint. Many condemnations and seizures from which America suffered, were due, directly or indirectly, to these evasions. "As for England," announced the angry Emperor, on a recent occasion, "commercial relations with her must cease. I am armed cap-à-pie to enforce my orders, and to frustrate her intentions in the Baltic. The decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire."*

Inadmissible as were Foster's assumptions of what a neutral ought to procure from France, Napoleon by no means so conducted himself as to dispel suspicions of his candor and good faith, or to enable Monroe to refute triumphantly the no less uncandid assertion that the French edicts had not been revoked. Imperial expressions, like that above quoted, might be consistently explained, but with the menace to England went out one to the United States.† That menace was more than half a year later than Cadore's famous letter; two months beyond the time when the President's proclamation had taken full effect; four weeks after Congress made the promise good upon which he had professed to act in the first place, though of the last fact knowledge had not reached him. True, indeed, to his nature, he trusted nothing, believed nothing, and, relying not upon promise but fulfilment, he made the present fulfilment hard to reconcile with our sense of self-respect. With all the love for Americans he had professed, he not only held back so as to move with equal step as information might reach him, but prepared to wreak his vengeance upon our com

* Napoleon to a French deputation from the Council of Commerce, March 31st, 1811; foreign newspapers of the day; Niles's Register, October, 1811.

"The power which suffers its flag to be violated, cannot be considered neutral. The fate of American commerce will soon be decided. I will favor it if the United States conform themselves to their decrees. In a contrary case their vessels will be driven from my empire."

May 12.

merce should we break the compact. The American act of March 2d reached him at length; he keenly scrutinized its language, and then, as if satisfied, announced through Bassano that the American ships and cargoes which had arrived since November 2d were liberated, and placed once more at the disposal of their respective owners. Had Congress shown an equal distrust of his promises, who can doubt that all this sequestered property would have gone into the sepulchre of former confiscations?

The later historian of France laments that its ruler did not, by timely concessions and courtesies, induce the United States at once to declare the war against England which did not commence until a year later; and he pictures the happier consequences to France had England, finding herself at this moment without allies in Europe, seen a new enemy rise up beyond the seas, while France, having secured the Americans as co-operators instead of violators of the continental blockade, and being unable herself to reproach Russia, might, by a last blow struck in Spain, have brought this maritime war to an end.* All this, however, must have assumed a Thiers instead of a Napoleon as the empire's favorite son. But, certainly, had Napoleon's new friendship coincided with his own ardent professions, the resources of America would have united against England with a promptness and energy which it was now impossible to summon. And had he not turned to subjugate Russia, with whose Czar nature herself was in alliance, his fortunes might not have sunk so suddenly or so disastrously.

Admitting, as he was compelled to, that the Emperor delayed restitution injuriously to the United States, Monroe nevertheless maintained that our whole correspondence with France showed a repeal of her obnoxious decrees against us, and that although one or two detentions had lately been made, imputable to other causes, the French tribunals had not condemned a single American vessel on the principle of those decrees since the November preceding. As to whether Great Britain or France were the first aggressor, the British abuse of the rights of blockade, he contended, preceded the Berlin decree.

* Thiers, tome xv, 38.