Constitutional adjustment of the parts of the government must remain intact to preserve the essence of popular liberty.

The courts had sustained the Alien and Sedition laws, and gentlemen of the first position were in prison as offenders. Air. Jefferson, in order to organize a Republican party, wrote a series of expository resolutions of great length, and procured them to be offered in the Legislature of Kentucky, defining the reserved rights of the States, and the delegated authority of the Federal government. He prevailed with Mr. Madison, who had been a follower of Hamilton, to enter the Virginia Legislature and to defend the new party there. It was necessary to begin the expounding of the new party principles in the State Legislatures, because of the great majority in Congress in favor of the administration. The Jefferson followers in the lower House, at this crisis, were known as "the old thirteen" for many years, denoting their numbers.

The Kentucky resolutions of 1798, and the Virginia resolutions of 1799, and Mr. Madison's report of 1800, were the basis of the new party. The first named were the gist of all. The Kentucky resolutions declared, that to submit to the usurpations of the administration and Congress "would be to surrender the form of government which we have chosen, and live under one which derives its powers from its own will and not from authority." In such a crisis of public faith, the resolutions proceeded to declare, that "each State should take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the Federal government, not plainly and intentionally authorized by the. Constitution, shall be exercised. within their respective territories." The Kentucky resolutions, in their proposed remedy of State interposition or nullification, are discovered to be in full accord with that provision of the Ordinance of 1784, which guaranteed to all the new States a "Charter of Compact," "unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress assembled," as one party thereto, "and of the particular State" as the other party.

Growth in use is the law of sound principles in morals or politics. Mr. Jefferson's party found ready for it the problem of control of fresh territorial acquisitions. As the old Articles of Confederation had not contemplated a common estate of the United States, the new Constitution had made no provision for

conquests or acquisitions of territory or its government in any specific way. But growth in empire became an inevitable policy, even to the States Rights party. The various circumstances which compelled the acquisition of Louisiana Territory present themselves for necessary consideration.

Immediately after peace with the mother country, Congress proceeded to negotiate treaties of commerce with western European States. The navigating States of the Union were naturally most earnest in demanding the early perfection of the treaties. Spain hesitated because of certain secret articles, which she had just discovered, in the treaty of recognition, with the mother country, supposed to give Great Britain advantages over her in the Floridas. She resolved to force the new Republic from the stipulations with Great Britain on this point. She therefore refused to enter into commercial relations. Meantime she held closed against the trade of the western settlements, the lower Mississippi river. Gardoqui, the Spanish Minister, remained a year at the American Congress, awaiting its decision. John Jay, the American Minister of Foreign Affairs, could not relieve the situation in face of the treaty with Great Britain. Finally it became known that Mr. Jay had yielded to the entreaties and menaces of the East and taken sides against the West. In order to perfect the treaty with Spain, in the interest of the Atlantic navigating States, he advised that the navigation of the lower Mississippi be left at the pleasure of Spain for the period of a quarter of a century. The western settlements protested vehemently, they would not submit. News of their protest, and the procrastination of Mr. Jay, or rather of Congress, reached New England. Town meetings expressed the public indignation in that quarter. Resolutions were passed calling for a dissolution of Congress, and the resumption by the States of their original sovereignty. About this time a citizen of North Carolina, one Amis, regardless of the delays of diplomacy, and thoughtful of sectional rights in his own interest only, undertook to pass a flat boat cargo of flour and hides down the Mississippi to New Orleans. He was hailed by the Spanish garrison when opposite Natchez, brought to shore, his boat and cargo confiscated and he sent afoot through the forests toward his home. From settlement to settlement, and hut to hut, he spread the

news of the closure of the river. From the Tennessee to the lakes the settlers were aroused. Volunteers offered to march on New Orleans and take the city. Threats were freely made of organizing a republic between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Time passed on, the Constitution was adopted, the government of the Union went into operation, and in Washington's administration a treaty was established with Spain, securing to the people of the United States the right to navigate the Mississippi, with a stipulation that they should have the right to deposit their goods on the Island of Orleans, or elsewhere, awaiting facilities for shipment to sea or up the river. Spain, meantime, transferred all the Louisiana territory, including the Island of Orleans to Napoleon. By edict of the Governor of the Island, Americans were refused the commercial privileges stipulated for in the Spanish treaty. The whole western settlements rose in indignation. Mr. Ross introduced in the Senate, in February, 1803, resolutions authorizing the President to call out not exceeding fifty thousand militia from the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, and the Mississippi Territory, to protect the rights of Americans on the western waters. Mr. Breckenridge moved to amend the resolution so as to require the Governors of all the States to arm, equip and hold in readiness eighty thousand militia for the same purpose. Mr. DeWitt Clinton, opposing the resolution and amendment, said: "It has struck me with not a little astonishment that on the agitation of every great political question, we should be menaced with this great evil the severance of the States. Last session when a bill repealing a judiciary act was under consideration, we were told that the Eastern States would withdraw themselves from the Union should it obtain; and we are now informed that if we do not accede to the proposition before us the Western States will hoist the standard of revolt, and dismember the Union."

The President, Mr. Jefferson, was greatly alarmed. Would the First Consul of the French carry his extraordinary good sense into the perplexity of the American situation to its relief? "The people are unapprised that Louisiana is a speck in our horizon about to burst into a tornado," wrote the President to Dr. Priestly. Louisiana must be obtained by the United States.

"Whether we remain in one Confederacy (continued the letter to Priestly) or form into Atlantic and Mississippi Confederacies, I believe to be not very important to the happiness of either party." The problem was to prevent England from taking advantage of the discontent, of the western settlements to propose their protection by holding open the mouth of the Mississippi to their trade, while France should be dispossessed of Louisiana by their help. Would Messrs. Ross, Morris and their sympathizers, in premature zeal, open the way to England? Would the First Consul soon go to war with England, and, needing money, sell Louisiana? When Mr. Livingston approached M. Talleyrand, the French diplomatist denied that France owned Louisiana. Livingston told him he had seen a copy of the treaty with Spain. At that time England had a fleet of twenty men-of-war in the Gulf waiting to find out whether France or Spain owned the Territory to determine her course.

The treaty of purchase was made, and Spain brought up her right of redemption under her conditions of sale to France. The President declined to observe the Spanish claim. But the Federalists (nationalists) were bitterly opposed to the purchase, and consented in the Senate to ratify and in the House to appropriate the funds for the execution of the treaty only for fear of English interference and western disloyalty. Napoleon had already begun to fear he had made a bad bargain, and the President dreaded to hear news from France. The President warned his supporters that "the less said about any constitutional difficulty, the better." He intended to ask Congress to seek to make valid the treaty by proposing an amendment to the Constitution. He would not consent to reduce the security of republican institutions by making the Constitution blank paper. He would ask for every enlargement of power from the source of power, rather than assume to make it boundless by construction. If there were any bounds to the government, they could be no other than the definitions of the powers given to it by the written compact of the States.

The treaty of purchase contained a stipulation remarkable for its variance with the anti-slavery provisions of the Ordinances of 1784 and 1787. It was the third clause and was the

key to the act of Napoleon in parting with his land. The war in which he then engaged England would enable the United States to take possession, but it was advisable to provide for continued possession as against European sovereigns. The third clause of the treaty, therefore, was suggested by him for the express purpose of his own protection. It would never cease to be of importance to France. It provided, that "the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted, as soon as possible according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyments of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion they profess." The ratified treaty, under the provision of the Constitution relating to treaties, became "the supreme law of the land." Slavery had been established in the Louisiana territory by the special licenses of the king of Spain. The Spanish law had not been revoked by Napoleon in the short time of his possession. Slaves, therefore, were "property" wherever the municipal law of Spain, accepted by France, was stipulated to be preserved in the treaty of acquisition by the United States. So much for the guardianship of Napoleon's stipulation over the liberty, religion and property of the people of the relinquished territory in their territorial condition. The guardianship went farther. It provided that they should be admitted as States of the Union in full enjoyment of the equality secured by the organic law to all the States.

We are now ready to consider the earliest of those startling paradoxes which mark the history of the relation of the federal government to the Louisiana purchase. In 1804 and 1805, Congress forbid the importation of Africans, into Louisiana and Mississippi Territories, who had arrived since 1798 or who might thereafter arrive. The act was a severe blow to the commerce of New England in Africans and which was, as had been believed, protected by that provision of the Constitution which inhibited the interference of Congress with the trade in "any of the States now existing "" prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight," to the fullest extent possible up to the limit of time specified. No commerce