CHAPTER every infraction, to open resistance. The mode and en XXIX. ergy of opposition ought rather to conform to the nature

1815. of the violation, the intention of its authors, the extent

of the injury inflicted by it, the determination manifested to persist in it, and the danger of delay. Yet, in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people, it was not only the right, but the duty also, of the state to interpose its authority for their protection. When emergencies occur, either beyond the reach of the judicial tribunals, or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their forms, states which have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute their own decisions. Though not claiming any power to nullify acts of Congress, they did claim the right to prevent void acts from being carried into execution; and they recommended accordingly to their respective states to wait the ultimate disposal of the obnoxious measures then pending in Congress; and, according to the shape those measures should assume, to take such steps as might be found necessary, effectually to protect their own sovereignty, and the rights and liberties of their citizens. Such were the doctrines on the subject of state rights-rights quite out of fashion just then at Washington, though once so favorite a topic with the ruling party -laid down by the Hartford Convention. Agreeing with all the most distinguished statesmen of the Union, one or two only excepted (and they not so much statesmen as lawyers), that convention omitted to recognize any pretended authority in the Federal Supreme Court to decide on the sovereign rights of the states.

As to the defense of New England against the common enemy, that defense had hitherto rested almost entirely on the state governments. Massachusetts had al

HARTFORD CONVENTION,

553

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ready expended for that purpose upward of $800,000; CHAPTER and, from the bankruptcy of the general government, this state of things was likely to continue. But, in the pres- 1815. ent ruinous condition of her commerce, it would be impossible for her or the other New England States to con. tinue to defend themselves, except by the appropriation to that purpose of a reasonable portion of the heavy taxes levied on them by a government bound to protect them, but failing to do so. Such an application of a part of the money paid by themselves was too reasonable to be refused, and the states were advised to press it at Wash. ington.

With a view to security against the recurrence in future of evils like the present, several amendments to the Federal Constitution were proposed: the basing representation on free population; making the president ineligible for a second term; disqualifying persons of for eign birth to hold office; limiting embargoes to sixty days; requiring a two thirds' vote in Congress to admit new states, to interdict commercial intercourse, to declare war, or to authorize hostilities, except in cases of invasion.

Should the application to Congress for the proposed appropriation of revenue prove ineffectual, and should the existing state of circumstances in other respects continue, it was recommended that a new convention meet in Boston in June. The officers of the present convention were also authorized, in case of any pressing emergency in the interval, to issue a call for its re-assembly.

This report having been accepted by the Legislatures Jan. 19. of Massachusetts and Connecticut, commissioners appointed by those Legislatures were dispatched to Wash- Jan. 25 ington, to lay the proposed arrangement as to taxes before Congress; an arrangement put, indeed, into the

XXIX.

CHAPTER shape of a request, but having, under the circumstances, much the aspect of a demand.

1815.

The bill for the enlistment of minors having passed Congress pending the session of the convention, the Legislature of Connecticut, and the same thing was pres ently done in Massachusetts, proceeded to pass an act requiring the state judges to discharge on habeas corpus all minors enlisted without the consent of their parents or guardians, and subjecting to fine and imprisonment any person concerned in any such enlistment who should remove any such minor out of the state, so that he could not be thus discharged. But the abandonment at Washington of the conscription system made any action under these laws unnecessary.

The position, meanwhile, of Madison and his cabinet, grew day by day more embarrassing. Nothing further. had yet been heard from the commissioners at Ghent. From inability to command specie, a new default had been made at Boston in paying the January dividends on the national debt, and on a large amount of treasury notes falling due there. Every department of the gov ernment was greatly behind hand in its payments. While Tompkins sustained the garrison of New York by his own private credit, Pinkney, at Charleston, was obliged to ask an advance from the state. The recruiting service, even the pitiful expedient of the enlistment of minors, was at a complete stand-still for want of funds. No longer placing any reliance on the capacity of the general government to fulfill its duties, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Kentucky had followed the example of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, in directing the enlistment of state troops. The conscrip tion scheme being scouted, even by the war men, the only provision made for the military service was a return

ARMY AND NAVY.

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to the old expedient, once already tried and rejected, of CHAPTER twelve months' volunteers, of which the government was anthorized to engage 40,000; while for local defense 1815. they were not only authorized, but required to accept, if offered, the services of 40,000 state troops, these troops not to be required to serve except in their own state and those adjoining it, and to be reckoned, in any call for militia, as a part of the state quota.

Even the navy, hitherto such a god-send to the war 1814. party, seemed at last to have failed them. An act had Nov. 15. been passed for the purchasing or building of twenty small cruisers, and under it steps had been taken for pro curing and fitting out two squadrons of five vessels each, to sail for the West Indies, with orders to sink, burn, and destroy the one under Porter, the other under Perry. It seemed doubtful, however, whether seamen could be obtained to man even these small squadrons, so unpopular was the service on Lake Ontario, to which most of the seamen lately enlisted had been sent; and it was a curious comment upon Madison's many eloquent diplomatic diatribes against the principle and practice of impressment, to find Jones, who presently resigned, and was succeeded by Benjamin Crowninshield, recommending, in his annual navy report, a registration and conscription of seamen for the navy!

The Constitution, now commanded by Stewart, had succeeded, by the help of the winter gales, in getting out of Boston harbor. But Decatur, in the frigate President, attempting to evade the blockade of New York, having also under his command the sloops Hornet and Peacock, was not so fortunate. The morning after getting to sea, he was chased by a fifty gun ship, three frigates, and a brig. The Endymion frigate, of forty guns, soon got within gunshot, and in a running fight along

Dec.

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CHAPTER the south shore of Long Island, was pretty thoroughly disabled; but Decatur was also crippled, and the other 1815. vessels coming up, he was obliged to strike. The two Jan. 15. sloops of war, ignorant of this misadventure, got to sea a few days after, and proceeded on their course, once more displaying, in conjunction with the Constitution, those stripes and stars which, since the mysterious disappearance of the Wasp, had ceased to wave on the ocean from any national ship.

Disgusted at the defeat of his non-specie paying bank, Jan. 17. Dallas, in a new report, laid more bare than ever the

poverty of the treasury. The year had closed with nineteen millions of unpaid debts, to meet which there was a nominal balance in the treasury of less than two millions, and about four and a half millions of uncollected taxes. For the service of the next year fifty millions would be needed. The total revenue, including the produce of the new taxes, was estimated at but eleven millions-ten from taxes, and one only from duties on im. ports; to such a low ebb had the commerce of the United States been reduced! Dallas proposed to raise fifteen millions by a new issue of treasury notes, on Eppes's plan, to serve as a sort of government currency, redeemable by instalments in five years. To create any chance of borrowing the rest, it would be necessary to begin by laying new taxes to the annual amount of five millions, as security for the payment of the interest. Dividends, income, inheritances, legal proceedings, mercantile documents, and a dollar a barrel on flour, were mentioned as sources whence this income might be derived.

The government thus without money or credit; the regular force rather diminishing than increasing; the now divided and discordant war party unwilling to agree to the desperate expedients urged upon them by the cabi