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CHAPTER the House to the influence and control of the secretaries. In this view of the matter, Williamson, Tucker, Madison, 1792. Giles, Page, Venable, White, Clark of New Jersey, and even Murray, Fitzsimmons, and Livermore, concurred. The motion was supported by the mover, by Ames, Lawrence, Boudinot, Gerry, and Smith of South Carolina. Gerry ridiculed the alarm which some members seemed to evince on this subject. The secretaries would attend merely to give such information as might be required, not as members or as ministers to influence the determinations of the House. The motion, however, failed to pass, and finally, on Madison's suggestion, the matter was sent back to the original committee for further investigation. Before this committee the secretaries and other parties interested were allowed to attend for the purpose of giving explanations-a precedent ever since followed in similar cases. Toward the end of the session a supplemental report was made, modifying and explaining away many of the censures contained in the first report.

Nov. 19.

Another not less vehement debate presently arose on a motion by Fitzsimmons to refer that part of the president's message relating to the redemption of the public debt to the Secretary of the Treasury, to report a plan for that purpose. This reference, warmly opposed by Madison, Mercer, Findley, Page, and Baldwin, was supported by Fitzsimmons, Williamson, Hillhouse, Murray, Smith of South Carolina, Sedgwick, Ames, Lawrence, Livermore, and Gerry, as coming within the express provi sions of the act establishing the Treasury Department, Nov. 21. and was finally carried by thirty-two votes to twentyfive. Another resolution was passed at the same time, directing the secretary to report a plan for paying up at once the two millions advanced by the Bank of the United States as an offset to the two millions subscribed

V.

to the stock of that institution, and which, by the terms CHAPTER of the loan, was reimbursable in annual installments of $200,000, with interest at six per cent.

The idea of paying off this debt to the bank had originated with Hamilton, who proposed to appropriate to that purpose a part of the proceeds of the loans recently negotiated in Holland under the authority formerly given to pay off the over-due installments of the French debt. In consequence of the dethronement of Louis XVI., news of which had just arrived in America, and the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, leaving no authority in France at that moment competent to give a discharge, directions had been sent to Gouverneur Morris to suspend payments on account of the French debt until further orders. Not to lose the interest on this money, Hamilton proposed to appropriate it to pay off the debt to the bank, authority being first obtained to negotiate a new loan of two millions out of which to meet the payments on the French debt whenever they should be resumed. Not only would this arrangement prevent any temporary loss of interest, but, should the new loan be negotiated on terms as favorable as those recently obtained, an annual saving would accrue to the United States of about $35,000, the difference between six per cent., the rate of interest paid to the bank, and the rate at which the latest Dutch loans had been obtained.

In the interval between these references to the Secretary of the Treasury and his report thereon, some warm speeches were made upon quite a different topic. Since the famous debate upon slavery at the second session of the first Congress, about two years before, that question, having been found so inflammable, had hardly been touched upon in the House, the administration party and the opposition being both alike afraid of it. The IV. B B

1792.

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CHAPTER Abolition Society of Pennsylvania had indeed presented, at the last session, a memorial calling upon Congress to 1792. exercise, for the suppression of the slave trade, those powers which, by the report of the Committee of the Whole, entered on the journals of the House, Congress had been declared to possess. Re-enforced by others from the abolition societies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and from several local societies in Maryland, that memorial had been referred to a special committee. As that committee had made no report, memorials had been presented at the present session from the abolition societies of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, recalling the attention of Congress to the subject; but these, as yet, had been suffered to lie upon the table without reference. Afterward a separate petition had been presented from Warner Mifflin, a philanthropical Quaker of Delaware, on the general subject of negro slavery, its injustice, and the necessity of its abolition. At the time of its presentation, this document had been read and laid upon the table without comment. Two Nov. 26. days after, Steele, of North Carolina, called attention to it by observing "that, after what had passed at New York, he had hoped the House would have heard no more of that subject. To his surprise, he found the business started anew by a fanatic, who, not content with keeping his own conscience, undertook to be the keeper of the consciences of other men, and, in a manner not very decent, had obtruded his opinion on the House." After some complaints that such a petition should have been presented, Steele moved that it be returned to the petitioner by the clerk, and that the entry of it be erased from the journal. The petition, it chanced, had been presented by Ames, to whom Mifflin had applied for that purpose, as the Delaware member happened to be absent.

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Ames hastened to renew the declaration of his opinion, CHAPTER expressed in the debate two years before, that Congress could take no steps as to the matter to which the me- 1792. morial related. Having been requested to present it, he had done so on the general principle that every citizen had a right to petition the Legislature, and to apply to any member as the vehicle to convey his petition to the House.

It was a mere rant

In seconding Steele's motion, Smith of South Carolina. "admitted, to its full extent, the right of every citizen to petition for redress of grievances, and the duty of the House to consider such petitions. But the paper in question was not of that description. and rhapsody of a meddling fanatic, interlarded with texts of Scripture, and without any specific prayer. The citizens of the Southern States, finding that a paper of this sort had been received by the House, and formally entered on their journals, might justly be alarmed, and led to believe that doctrines were countenanced destructive of their interests. The gentleman who presented it, and who, he observed with regret, had not on this occasion displayed his usual regard for the Southern States, had stated its contents to relate only to the slave trade. Had he stated its real objects, namely, to create disunion among the states, and to excite the most horrible insurrections, the House would undoubtedly have refused its reception. After the proceedings at New York, his constituents had a right to expect that the subject would never be stirred again. These applications were not calculated to meliorate the condition of those who were their objects, and who were at present happy and contented. On the contrary, by alienating their affections from their masters, and exciting a spirit of restlessness, they tended to make greater severities necessary. He

CHAPTER therefore earnestly called upon the House, by agreeing V. to the present motion, to convince this troublesome en1792. thusiast, and others who might be disposed to communicate their ravings and wild effusions, that they would meet the treatment they justly deserved. As the present application was disrespectful to the House, insulting to the Southern members, and a libel on their constituents, it ought no longer to remain on the table, but should be returned to its author with marked disapprobation." That part of the motion relating to the return of the petition was agreed to; the part respecting the erasure of the journal was withdrawn by the mover. Dec. 3. The report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the payment of the public debt suggested a very ingenious scheme. It appeared by this report that up to 1801, when payments on the deferred debt might first commence, the amount of the six per cent. debt annually redeemable by the terms of the loans rose by annual increase from $550,000 to $1,126,000. To meet these successive installments, besides appropriating to that purpose the surplus bank dividends over and above the interest payable on the loan from the bank, the secretary proposed to borrow successive sums of money on the pledge of taxes to be annually imposed, sufficient, with the other funds above mentioned, not only to secure the interest on the sums thus borrowed, but to pay off the principal also, within periods of from five years to one year; these taxes to be made permanent, and, after paying off the temporary loans for which in the first place they were pledged, to be applied to the discharge of other installments of the public debt.

To carry this scheme into effect, it would be necessary to lay in the first year new taxes to the amount of $43,000, and in each of the succeeding six years, other