XV.

without seeing a fence or any object except brick-kilns CHAPTER and temporary huts for laborers. Mr. Law"-a brother of the subsequent Lord Ellenborough, who had trans- 1800. ferred to America, and had vested to a large extent in Washington City lots, a great fortune acquired in India. -"and a few other gentlemen live in great splendor, but most of the inhabitants are low people, whose appearance indicates vice and intemperance, or else negroes. All the lands which I have described are valued at fourteen to twenty-five cents the superficial foot. There appears to be a confident expectation that this place will soon exceed any city in the world. Mr. Thornton, one of the commissioners, spoke of a popula tion of 160,000 as a matter of course in a few years. No stranger can be here a day, and converse with the proprietors, without conceiving himself in the company of crazy people. Their ignorance of the rest of the world, and their delusions with respect to their own prospects, are without parallel. Immense sums have been squandered in buildings which are but partly finished, in situations which are not, and never will be, the scenes of business, while the parts near the public buildings are almost wholly unimproved. On the whole, I must say that the situation is a good one, and I perceive no reason for suspecting it to be unhealthy; but I had no conception, till I came here, of the folly and infatuation of the people who have directed the settlements. Though five times as much money has been expended as was necessary, and though the private buildings are in number sufficient for all who will have occasion to reside here, yet there is nothing convenient and nothing plenty but provisions; there is no industry, society, or business."

Mrs. Adams's account of matters when she came to

Nov. 21.

CHAPTER take possession of the presidential mansion, since familXV. iarly known as the White House, was hardly more flat1800. tering. "Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach the city, which is only so in name. Here and there is a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed among the forests, through which you travel miles without seeing a human being. In the city there are buildings enough, if they were compact and finished, to accommodate Congress and those attached to it; but as they are, and scattered as they are, I see no great comfort for them.

"The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requir ing about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables: an establishment," she ironically adds, "very well proportioned to the president's salary. The lighting the apartments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers is a tax indeed; and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues is another cheering comfort." "If they will put me up some bells there is not one hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain—and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I design to be pleased. I could content myself almost any where three months; but, surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people can not be found to cut and cart it! Briesler entered into a contract with a man to supply him with wood. A small part-a few cords only, has he been able to get. Most of that was expended to dry the walls of the house before we came in, and yesterday the man told him it was impossible to procure it to be cut and carted. He has had recourse to coals; but we can not get grates made and set. We have indeed come into a new country."

XV.

The public offices had hardly been established at Wash- CHAPTER ington when the War Office took fire and was burned, occasioning the destruction of many valuable papers. In 1800. the course of the winter a like accident happened to the Treasury Department, though there the destruction of papers was less. In the rabid party fury of the times, Pickering's dismissal from office had been ascribed by the Aurora, which all the other opposition papers copied, to great pecuniary defalcations; and now, in the same spirit, these fires were attributed to design on the part of certain public officers, who, it was said, hoped thus to destroy the evidence of their deficiencies.

Before the choice of electors in South Carolina was yet known, and while the event seemed to depend on that state, Congress came together at the new city. The Nov. 22. president's speech announced the prospect of an arrangement with France; but, at the same time, suggested that the United States could not, without dangerous impru dence, abandon those means of self-defense adapted to its situation, and to which, notwithstanding their pacific pol icy, the violence and injustice of other nations might soon compel them to resort. Considering the extent of the American sea-coast, the vast capital engaged in trade, and the maritime resources of the country, a navy seem. ed to be the most effectual instrument of defense. Seasonable and systematic arrangements for that purpose, so that, in case of necessity, a naval armament might be quickly brought into use, appeared to be as much recommended by a wise and true economy as by regard for future peace and security. Perseverance in the fortification of the principal sea-ports was recommended as a subsidiary means of defense, and attention also to the manufacture of arms. These, with a reorganization of the judiciary establishment, and the necessary legislation for

CHAPTER the District of Columbia, constituted the chief topics of the speech.

XV.

1800.

Ever since the dismissal of his colleagues, Wolcott had felt his position in the cabinet very uncomfortable; but the urgency of his friends, and the desire to leave the affairs of his department on a good footing, had hitherto induced him to remain. He had fixed, however, on the. end of the year as a period for retiring, of which he notified the president and the House, asking, at the same time, an investigation into his official conduct. He left the treasury in a flourishing condition. The duties on imports had exceeded those of the year preceding by nearly two millions and a half; the sum of $734,000 had been received from the direct tax; the internal duties produced near a million; and as the disbanding of the additional regiments had diminished the expenses below the estimates, the treasury contained, when Wolcott left it, a balance of $2,623,000, a greater amount than it had contained at the close of any previous year. The greater part of the loan of three millions and a half of dollars, authorized at the last session, had been taken up, but repayments had been made to nearly an equal amount. The total receipts of the year, loans included, amounted to $12,451,000, very nearly the same with those of the previous year. The total expenditures amounted to about twelve millions, near a million more than those of the year preceding. The balance in the treasury was mainly derived from the balance on hand at the commencement of the year.

Dexter was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in Wolcott's place; the War Department, after two or three unsuccessful attempts to find a successor for Dexter, remaining without a head. Neither Wolcott nor Pickering, however they might be denounced by their Virginia

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rivals as monarchists and aristocrats, had, like Jefferson, CHAPTER Madison, and so many other Southern Democrats, hereditary plantations to retire to, where they might play the 1800. patriarch, and live in aristocratic leisure on the unpaid labors of a numerous family of slaves. After twelve years of laborious and important public service, Wolcott left office with not $600 in his pocket. His ideas extended no further than to the purchase of a small farm in his native Connecticut on which to support his family. Pickering had no property except some wild lands in the Wyoming settlements of Pennsylvania, purchased after his retirement from the army, but not yet paid for. Thither he had retired with his numerous young family, to cut a farm out of the wilderness. But his Massachusetts friends of the Essex Junto, unwilling to see his services. thus lost to the public, bought his lands at a generous price, and so enabled him to purchase a small farm near his native Salem, where he lived for a quarter of a century in the extremest republican simplicity, but not without, as we shall presently see, an active participation in public affairs.

Among the first subjects of discussion in Congress was the erection of a monument to Washington, in conformity with the resolves adopted at his death. A bill had been introduced and partially discussed at the last session for building a marble mausoleum of a pyramidal shape, with a base of a hundred feet. This was violently opposed by many Republican members, who thought a plain slab of marble quite enough. History and his country's gratitude would serve, they said, as his true monument. In the course of the debate, attention was called to an unexecuted resolve of the Continental Congress, adopted on Washington's resigning his military command, for an equestrian statue. This would be cheaper