transfer such a weight into the scale of the enemy?" He however adds, that "if she considers Louisiana as indispensable to her interests, she may still cede the island of New Orleans and the Floridas." That this cession would "in a great degree remove the causes of irritation, and at any time prevent the necessity of resorting to arrangements with Great Britain;" but that even then, we should consider New Orleans and the Floridas as no equivalent for the risk of a quarrel with France, produced by her vicinage." He correctly remarks in conclusion, that, " Every eye in the United States is now fixed on the affairs of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing, since the revolutionary war, has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation, and in spite of our temporary bickerings with France, she still had a strong hold on our affections.''

These views were fortunately favoured by the course of events which was then passing in Europe.

Among the minor vexations which Mr. Jefferson experienced in the early part of his administration, was that which was caused by the ingratitude and calumnies of a mercenary writer, James T. Callender. He was a native of Scotland, possessed of a good genius, improved by education, and had sought an asylum in this country either from poverty or prosecution. He soon found employment in Philadelphia, as a political writer, on the side of the republican party; and having attracted attention by the coarse vigour of his style, Mr. Jefferson, among others of his party, learning of Callender's indigence, made him donations of small sums of money from time to time. Thus encouraged, he had redoubled his efforts during the hottest of the conflict, and had even brought out a volume or two in which he assailed the members of the administration and federal party, personally and politically, with all his powers of argument and vituperation. He often wrote with great force, but his charges

were in such a style of exaggeration, and expressed in a strain of ribaldry and vulgarity so unusual, that he was likely to injure the cause he espoused yet more than to serve it. When, however, Mr. Jefferson was elected, he seemed to consider that his labours had contributed to that result, and he boldly applied to him for the office of postmaster at Richmond as his reward. This office was worth about 1500 dollars a year, and was then held by the editor of a newspaper and a federalist; of course, it came within the rule that had been furnished for removals. As he had no sort of claim to this, or indeed to any office, his services having already received the only remuneration ever thought of, he was of course refused; but the refusal was accompanied with a further gratuity of fifty dollars. It should be farther mentioned that Mr. Jefferson as soon as he became President, exercised his powers of pardon in favour of Callender, as well as all others who had been convicted under the sedition law, and were then undergoing sentence of imprisonment. He took great offence at the refusal, and in no long time was found writing in opposition to the new administration; and he openly justified his desertion, on the ground of the ill-treatment he had received from Mr. Jefferson. He was of course welcomed by his new allies, and having connected himself with the editor of an obscure journal, recently established in Richmond (the Recorder), he poured forth against the republican party generally, and Mr. Jefferson in particular, a torrent of scurrility and slander, of which no example had been previously afforded in the United States, not even by himself. The private life of Mr. Jefferson, present and past, was the subject of the closest scrutiny, and wherever he was believed to be vulnerable, no matter for what cause, or upon what evidence, he was unhesitatingly assailed in the grossest and most offensive way. Such too are the debasing - effects of party malignity, that there were not wanting those

of the federal party who were panders to this writer's vindictive calumnies, and communicated every piece of scandal or gossip, no matter how unfit for the public eye, how unsupported by evidence, or improbable in itself, which was thought at all likely to lower the chief magistrate in the eyes of the nation. The paper which was the vehicle of these slanders, and which previously circulated scarcely out of Richmond, now found its way to the remotest parts of the Union. It remains to be added that while this wretched libeller, who had now become an habitual sot, was disseminating his slanders and ribaldry with untiring virulence, he was one morning found drowned in James River, where he had been bathing, it was supposed, in a state of intoxication.

That Mr. Jefferson was annoyed by the libels sufficiently appears by a long letter which he wrote to Mr. Monroe, then living in Richmond, on the 15th of July, 1802, in which he gives a detail of his first acquaintance with Callender, and of all the dealings or communications he ever had with him*.

In consequence of a disagreement between the commissioners of Great Britain and the United States about the interpretation of the 6th article of the treaty of 1794, and the consequent dissolution of the board, a further negotiation took place on the subject, and Mr. King, the American minister at London, was instructed to agree to the proposition made by the British government, to pay a specific sum, in lieu of all such claims under that article of the treaty as could not be recovered by law against American citizens. He accordingly signed a convention, by which 600,000 pounds sterling were agreed to be paid in three annual in

stalments.

The course now pursued by the French government to

* III. Jeff. Corr., p. 495.

wards this country plainly showed that they no longer regarded it with any favour, and Mr. Jefferson in his letter to the American minister in Paris, dated October 10th, 1802, adverting to this fact, says that we should take no part between her and her rival, but that we wished to remain well with France. He adds, however, our conviction "that no consequences, however ruinous to them, can secure us with certainty against the extravagance of her present rulers :" but while we should "do nothing which the first nation on earth would deem crouching, we had better give to all our communications to them a very mild, complaisant, and even friendly complexion, but always independent." Callender's slanders were so full upon his mind at this time, that he even mentions the subject to Mr. Livingston. "You will have seen," he says, " by our newspapers, that with the aid of a lying renegado from republicanism, the federalists have opened all their sluices of calumny. They say we lied them out of power, and openly avow they will do the same by us. But it was not lies or arguments on our part which dethroned them, but their own foolish acts, alien laws, taxes, extravagances and heresies."

It seems from a letter addressed by Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Gallatin about this time, October 13th, that he regarded the act of Congress for building piers in the Delaware as unconstitutional, so far as its object was to benefit navigation, and it was derived from the power to regulate commerce. He thought, however, that the act might be brought within the constitution, under the power to provide and maintain a navy, which gives a power to provide " receptacles for it, and places to cover and protect it." He considered that the building of light-houses was also liable to the first objection: but that the utility of the thing had sanctioned the infraction. Notwithstanding the provocation he was daily receiving from the federal presses, they seemed to have

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K

had no effect in turning him from his prescribed course of administering the government. The following sentiments and views in a letter to Mr. Lincoln, the attorney-general, were as liberal as wise. Having noticed the favourable changes of public opinion, as indicated by the recent elections, he says, "The opinion I originally formed has never been changed, that such of the body of the people as thought themselves federalists, would find that they were republicans, and would come over to us by degrees; but that their leaders had gone too far to change." After mentioning the increasing bitterness of this portion of them, he adds in a tone of elevation which cannot be too much commended, "I shall take no other revenge than by a steady pursuit of economy and peace, and by the establishment of republican principles in substance and form, to sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection of it. I still think our original idea as to office is best: that is, to depend for the obtaining a just participation on deaths, resignations, and delinquencies. This will least affect the tranquillity of the people, and prevent their giving into the suggestion of our enemies, that ours has been a contest for office, not for principle. This is rather a slow operation, but it is sure, if we pursue it steadily, which, however, has not been done with the undeviating resolution I could have wished. To these means of obtaining a just share in the transaction of the public business, shall be added one other, to wit, removal for electioneering activity, or open and industrious opposition to the principles of the present government, legislative and executive. Every officer of the government may vote at elections according to his conscience; but we should betray the cause committed to our care, were we to permit the influence of official patronage to be used to overthrow that cause."

The motives which had operated with the executive for