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objections against the Mediterranean fund clause, and against the act itself.

By the first section of the act an additional duty of two and a half per cent ad valorem was imposed upon all goods, wares and merchandise imported, which were already charged with ad valorem duties. It was contended that this indiscriminate augmentation of duties upon one class of merchandise, many articles of which were already burthened with charges as heavy as they could well bear, would operate very unequally and inequitably upon different portions of the Union; that the funds ought to be raised by specific impositions upon specific articles, or by some other mode of taxation. The details of the debate are not present to my memory; but this was the substance of the objection to the tax and to the act, and of the reason upon which my vote was given.

There was another objection to the second section. It provided that a distinct account should be kept of the duties imposed by the act, the proceeds of which should constitute a fund to be denominated the Mediterranean fund, which should be applied solely to the purposes designated by that act; and that the said additional duty should cease and be discontinued at the expiration of three months after the ratification of a treaty of peace with Tripoli, unless we should then be at war with any other of the Barbary powers, in which case the said additional duty should cease and be discontinued at the expiration of three months after the ratification of a treaty of peace with such power.

It was objected to this section that it contained a delusive pledge or promise to the people which would never be redeemed; that it was but sweetening to the nauseous drug of taxation, unworthy of the dignity, and discreditable to the sincerity of the legislature; that it was no other than a costly and cumbersome fund; that the distinct account of duties to be applied solely to the purposes of that act, while altogether useless in itself, would only tend to embarrass and complicate the concerns and management of the Treasury, and that when once the tax should be thoroughly

and finally saddled upon the people, the Mediterranean fund and the distinct account would be dropped, but the burthen would remain.

How far these arguments were founded in truth, and this foresight was justified by the event, let the records of your national legislature decide. The ratification of the treaty of peace with Tripoli, three months after which by this promise the Mediterranean fund duty was to cease and be discontinued, took place in April, 1806.

On the 21st of the same month Congress passed an act by which the first section of the act further to protect the commerce and seamen of the United States against the Barbary powers was continued till the end of the then next session of Congress, and no longer. The peace with Tripoli had been ratified, we were not at war with any other of the Barbary powers. The Mediterranean fund, the distinct account and specific application of its proceeds, were all suffered silently to expire; but the additional duty of two and a half per cent was continued until the end of the next session of Congress, and no longer.

On the 3d of March, 1807, the same first section of the act, the duty of two and a half per cent were continued in force, until the first day of January then next, and no longer.

On the 19th of January, 1808, it was again revived and continued in force until the first day of January then next, but without the flattering promise of the words and no longer. By recurring to the journals of the Senate of 11th January, 1808, it will be seen that it was agreed to expunge these words from the bill. They were expunged at my motion and in the following manner. The bill was on its passage to a third reading. The venerable George Clinton, then in the chair of the Senate, holding the bill in his hand and about to put the question on its passage, beckoned to me to come to him from my seat. When I went up, he whispered to me, "I wish you would move to strike out these words and no longer." I answered him that I would with pleasure, but asked him what reason I should assign for the motion. "Why," said

he, "I am ashamed to sign my name so often TO A LIE." On this hint I made the motion, and the words were expunged. But the duty was continued from year to year until after the declaration of war against Great Britain, when it merged in the double duty act of 1st July, 1812.

Fellow citizens, I have explained to you the reasons and real motives for all these votes, which your representative, General Alexander Smyth, has laid to my charge in a printed address to you, and to which unusual publicity has been given in the newspapers. I am aware that in presenting myself before you to give this explanation, my conduct may again be attributed to unworthy motives. The best of actions may be, and have been, and will be, traced to impure sources by those to whom troubled waters are a delight. If in many cases where the characters of public men are canvassed however severely, it is their duty to suffer and be silent, there are others, in my belief many others, wherein their duty to their country, as well as to themselves and to their children, is to stand forth the guardians and protectors of their own honest fame. Had your representative, in asking again for your votes, contented himself with declaring to you his intentions concerning me, you never would have heard from me in answer to him. But when he imputes to me a character and disposition unworthy of any public man, and adduces in proof mere naked votes upon questions of great public interest, all given under the solemn sense of duty impressed by an oath to support the constitution and by the sacred obligations of a public trust, to defend myself against charges so groundless and so unprovoked, is, in my judgment a duty of respect to you, no less than a duty of self-vindication to me. I declare to you that not one of the votes which General Smyth has called from an arduous service of five years in the Senate of the Union, to stigmatize them in the face of the country, was given from any of the passions or motives to which he ascribes them; that I never gave a vote either in hostility to the administration of Mr. Jefferson, or in disregard to republican principles, or in aversion to republican patriots, or in favor of the

slave trade, or in denial of due protection to commerce. I will add, that having often differed in judgment with many of the best and wisest men of this Union of all parties, I have never lost sight either of the candor due to them in the estimate of their motives, or of the diffidence with which it was my duty to maintain the result of my own opinions in opposition to theirs.

Finally, my friends, I have a motive for meeting thus openly and explicitly the accusations of General Smyth, which has reference more to our whole country than to you alone or to me. In the hearts of us all upon every deliberation, whether in Congress, in the state legislature, on the election grounds, or in the public journals, the result to be aimed at by all should be peace, harmony, union, freedom. Public principle can be settled in accordance with these ends only by public discussion. On this, as on more than one other occasion, a personal attack upon me has implicated principles of morals and policy of the deepest import to you, to us all. With every vote upon which General Smyth has invoked your censure, was connected a great and important principle. That which he could trace to no other spring than selfish passions and sordid purposes, I have shown you to have been drawn from the deeper fountains of constitutional law, of genuine human rights, of discriminating moral sentiment. Say, if you please, that upon one or more, or all of these votes, my judgment was ill advised, but say that the motives by which it was influenced were pure, and that the reasons by which it was misled were not trivial or light. To all my votes on the acts legislating upon Louisiana in the session of 1803 and 1804, I will conclude with calling your permanent and deliberate attention. They involve, in the most eminent degree, the question still deeply interesting to you, of the constructive powers of Congress. Not indeed in the same point of view in which it is more usually presented to your feelings; not a question in direct conflict with another question as to the extent of the rights of your state legislatures; not a question between two sets of servants of the same family to which of them belongs the power to open a banking house or to dig a watercourse, but a question

between Congress and the sovereign people of the Union, between Congress and the peoples of the four quarters of the globe. Upon the question in this aspect my sentiments are recorded in the votes which I gave when it appeared in its first seminal principle upon the legislation over Louisiana in 1803 and 1804. The time is perhaps not far distant when the question in this respect will bear with momentous weight upon your interests and upon your affections. The seed was but as a grain of mustard seed. The plant may shoot forth its branches till it overshadows the earth. WASHINGTON, December 28, 1822.1

SIR,

TO JOHN FORSYTH

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, 3 January, 1823.

Mr. Edward Wyer, the bearer, is despatched as a confidential messenger, with the letters and documents which he will deliver to you. The unpleasant incidents which occurred in the course of the last summer at Algiers are doubtless known to you. If the misunderstanding is known to you to be still subsisting upon Mr. Wyer's arrival at Madrid, he is instructed to proceed thence with a despatch to our Consul General, Mr. Shaler, wherever he may be. It is hoped, however, that ere this an amicable explanation may have removed the difficulties which had arisen, and

1 General Smyth issued a second address to his constituents, which appeared in the National Intelligencer, January 11, 1823. See Adams, Memoirs, under that date. "Adams' reply to Gen'l Smith of Virginia is considered to be an able, and very skillful performance, and as the Virginians admit, well calculated for the meridian of the ancient Dominion; but I apprehend that he cannot become acceptable to the peculiar faith which does and must control the opinions of this region.” Rufus King to Charles King, January 9, 1823. Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, VI. 494.

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