Of

SHOULD Mr. Lowell remain in charge of the American | given by our leading men for the English mission. Legation in London until the close of the Administration all our Presidents, for example, John Quincy Adams was of President Arthur, it will be just a century since diplo- probably the only one who had a full command of any matic relations were first established between the United language but the English. States and Great Britain.

As the official deportment of the present incumbent is just now under fire, and a lively clamor is being raised in certain quarters for his recall, it will be interesting and profitable to review rapidly the personal history of this

JOHN ADAMS.

mission, and
to study some
of the difficul-
ties and risks
and perils
which have
beset those
who, in times
past, have
occupied that
position, from
which one
fact, at least,
will distinctly
appear, that
those minis-
ters whose
official
duct

con

has

passed unchallenged have not always deserved best

of their country.

JOHN ADAMS, 1785-1788. Passing over the anxious period during which Dr. Franklin was the agent of the colonies, the first

person upon whom fell the honor of representing the United States after the acknowledg

ment of their independence was John Adams, who was appointed by Congress in 1785, our Constitutional Government being not yet organized.

British colonial commerce with exclusive reference to home interests, was prolific of misunderstandings, which could only be settled by treaty. President Washington His sojourn in London was anything but pleasant. No wished to send Alexander Hamilton as a special minister American, probably, could have been found whose recep- to London, to treat of these matters. The Senate, howtion at the English Court, under the circumstances, would ever, were so hostile to Hamilton, and so suspicious of his have been gracious. For many centuries England had sus- monarchical sympathies, that his appointment was found tained no such humiliation as the loss of the larger and impracticable. Washington's choice then fell upon John better portion of her American colonies, and the necessity Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the of recognizing and treating as an equal the despised col- United States. He was appointed and confirmed in the onists through whom this humiliation was wrought, was Spring of 1794, having just been defeated as a candidate bitter, and not readily to be forgotten or forgiven. Nor for Governor of New York, by George Clinton. It is would it have been easy to find a prominent man in all perhaps the greatest reproach which can be made to the the colonies personally less welcome in England than name of John Jay that the first Chief Justice of the United Adams, who had been identified with all the boldest States should have been the first judicial officer under the measures of the rebellion from the beginning; whose American constitution to set the pernicious example of runpride of opinion was boundless, and who had little fac- ning for a political office. Though his example has been ulty for commending unpleasant opinions to any one. He repeatedly imitated by members of the Federal judiciary went little into general society, and as an American was since, happily it has never, in a single instance, been welcome nowhere; he passed his time, however, perhaps crowned with success. not unprofitably in writing his "Defense of the American Constitution," a book no longer read, but which had its valve in those days as a tolerably effective statement of the objections to the theories of Turgot, Mably, and of Dr. Price, who advocated single legislative assemblies, and the consolidation of the legislative and administrative powers of Government. After remaining in London about three years, during which time England not only omitted to send any diplomatic agent to the United States, but refused to recognize any basis upon which the numerous differences between the two Governments could be adjusted, he asked to be recalled, and returned to the United States in February, 1788, and at the approaching election, under the new constitution, had the historic distinction of being elected the first Vice President of the United States, on the same ticket with their first and most illustrious President.

THOMAS PINCKNEY, 1792-1794.

Mr. Adams was succeeded at London by Thomas Pirckney, of South Carolina, the son of Mrs. Chief Justice Pinckney, who deserves ever to be held in grateful remembrance for having first introduced the culture of rice into the Carolinas. He was sent to England in 1792. Of the results of his diplomacy there is little to be said, except that in 1794 he was transferred to Spain, where he negotiated the treaty of Saint Ildefonso, by which the free navigation of the Mississippi River was guaranteed to the United States. He seemed to have been personally acceptable to both those Courts; so acceptable indeed at the Court of Great Britain that his predecessor, Mr. Adams, was wont to ascribe his appointment to British influence.

After his return, and in the session of 1798, the Senate passed a resolution authorizing Mr. Pinckney to receive certain presents which had been tendered to him by the Courts both of Madrid and London. The House of Representatives, however, on grounds of public policy, refused to concur with the Senate. This was the first case of the kind which arose under the new constitution; but, unhappily, the disposition made of it did not acquire the authority of a precedent. It would be difficult to name any branch of our Government nowadays which has the moral fortitude to decline presents of any sort or value, come they from what quarter they may.

JOHN JAY, 1794-1795.

The difficulties between Great Britain and the young republic were every day growing more serious; the boundaries of their respective possessions on the American continent were undefined, while the British habit of regulating the

Jay reached London on the 15th of June, 1794, signed a treaty on the 9th of November, and was in New York again in the following May. Among other things, his treaty provided that British ships were to be admitted into all American harbors, with the right to ascend all rivers to the highest ports of entry, but did not confer upon American vessels the corresponding privilege of ascending the rivers of British North America. It also provided that Americans might trade to the West Indies in vessels not exceeding seventy tons burden, but they must not transport to Europe any of the colonial products.

Though the treaty received the reluctant approval of Washington, as on the whole the best that could then be done with England, and much better than a renewal of the war, and though the Senate ratified the treaty by exactly a two-thirds vote, it provoked a fearful storm of popular indignation, and was denounced throughout the country, more or less, but with great unanimity in the Southern States as a pusillanimous surrender of American rights, and as a scandalous infidelity to France. The Boston democrats burned Jay in effigy with the treaty. Hamilton was stoned while speaking at a public meeting in New York in defense of it. The resolution that it was expedient to pass the laws necessary to carry the treaty into effect was only agreed to by the House of Representatives after a fierce debate, in which Fisher Ames led the forces of the administration. Only four members from the New England States voted against the resolution, and by a curious coincidence only four from the Southern States voted in its favor.

Fortunately for Jay, he had been put in nomination for the Governorship of New York before he left England, and many months before the terms of the treaty transpired. He was elected by a large majority, and the result was officially declared just two days before he landed. He was, therefore, in a peculiarly fortunate position "to bide the pelting of this pitiless storm."

In the great commercial centres of the North and East, the public became reconciled to Mr. Jay, but the damage which his reputation sustained in the agricultural regions of the South was irreparable and effectually extinguished any presidential aspirations which a person who had held successively the office of Chief Justice of the United States, Minister to England, and Governor of New York, might reasonably have entertained.

RUFUS KING, 1796-1804.

It was not till the Spring following the confirmation of the Jay Treaty that Washington ventured to fill the