QUESTIONS.

1. State the object of Jay's Mission.

2. Mention the important points of the treaty and point out its defects.

3. State the British defense of impressment.

4. Describe the opposition to the treaty.

5. Why did the Republicans wish the House of Representatives to refuse appropriations to the treaty?

6. Why was the Senate more obnoxious to the Republicans than to the Federalists?

7. What was Livingston's resolution?

8. State Gallatin's view of the relation of the House of Representatives to treaties.

9. Upon what point did Fisher Ames lay most stress? 10. What were the important provisions of the treatics with Spain and Algiers?

11. Why was the right to navigate the Mississippi such an important matter to the people of the West and South?

WE

CHAPTER XVI.

THE WHISKY INSURRECTION.

WE HAVE seen that Hamilton's financial policy aimed to increase the stability and strengthen the authority of the Union, as well as restore its credit and provide it with a revenue. With these ends in view, as we have seen, he recommended an excise on distilled spirits as a means of providing the extra revenue rendered necessary by the assumption of state debts.

Prejudice against an ex

cise.

Of all forms of taxation, probably none was then so unpopular among English and Americans as an excise. Dr. Johnson's famous definition, "a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid," well described the general feeling of the people in this country as well as in England. The Continental Congress in its address of 1774 to the people of Canada, laid special stress on the fact that in being subject to England, they were subjected "to the imposition of excises, the horror of all free states."

In addition to this an excise laid on the people of the states by the general government seemed like a tax imposed by a foreign government. The Congress of the Confederation, as we know, had no power to lay taxes on

the people, and this power was withheld from it because the states regarded it as a foreign government. When Congress humbly requested the legislatures of the states to tax their citizens, its attitude, cap in hand, in the presence of its masters, was one which the immense majority of the people thought entirely proper. The new constitution had provided for a radical change in this relation. It authorized the government which it creatednot to go to the states as a beggar and ask for money— but as a monarch with power to compel obedience to his commands. It could indeed exercise this power only as directed by representatives whom the people had chosen. The power behind the throne was the whole American people. They were the real sovereign, and the general government was but the organ through which they acted, the agent that gave expression to their will.

But in the nature of the case it was impossible for this change in their constitution to produce any immediate change in the feelings of the people. The new constitution said that it, and laws and treaties made in accordance with it, should be the supreme law of

the land, but so in substance said the old.

The Articles of Confederation declared that

Effect of adop

tion of the con

stitution on the

feelings of the

people.

every state should abide by the decision of the United States in Congress assembled, in reference to all the questions submitted to them by the Confederation. But in spite of this declaration, the sovereign states had disregarded the decisions of Congress whenever they pleased. What was

to prevent their doing the same under the new government? There were, to be sure, in the new government an executive and a judiciary which had been wanting in the old. But was anyone foolish enough to suppose that this executive would dare enforce a law against the wishes of a sovereign and independent state? Senator Maclay, we remember, thought the very idea preposterous, and there is little doubt that in this, as in many other respects, he correctly represented the feelings of a large majority of the people. For what means could it employ? It had no standing army, and men of their way of thinking meant to take good care that it did not get one. And was it reasonable to suppose that militia would march against their fellow citizens and compel them to obey an unpopular, and, from their point of view, unjust law? The power of the executive depended entirely on the will of the people, and what reason was there to suppose that the people would go to the aid of the executive against themselves?

To put an end to such ideas, to make every man in the United States understand that the new government had power to compel obedience to its laws, to make them

Hamilton's object.

feel that the laws of the general government were not mere pieces of advice, suggestions to do this and not to do that, but com

mands that must be obeyed, was Hamilton's great political object in recommending an excise. Until this question was settled, he knew that the question as to whether

there was or was not a government was still undecided. He knew that the existence of a House of Representatives, Senate, President, Supreme Court, and all the governmental machinery that might be devised, did not of themselves prove that the new Constitution had created a government. Had it power to compel obedience to its laws? That was the question, upon the answer to which depended the decision as to whether the new constitution was merely a revised edition of the Articles of Confederation, or whether it had created a real government for the American State.

Hamilton knew that this transcendently important question must be decided sometime, and it seemed to him. highly desirable that the decision should be reached as soon as possible. In a long letter to Washington, Jefferson objected to the excise as "committing the authority of the government in parts where resistance is most probable and coercion least practicable." Hamilton in reply admitted that this objection had some weight. "It must be confessed," he continued, "that a hazard of this nature has been run; but if there were motives sufficiently cogent for it, it has been wisely run." After stating his financial reasons, he added this important paragraph: "Other reasons co-operated in the minds of some able men to render an excise at an early period de

Washington did not send Jefferson's letter, but stated its various points in order, and forwarded them to Hamilton as expressions of opinion in Virginia upon the policy of the government, and asked him to reply to them.