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CHAPTER motion on the table for modifying the citizen law. Their XII. threats pointed at Gallatin, and it is believed they will 1798. endeavor to mark him by this bill. Yesterday Hill

house laid on the table of the Senate a motion for giving power to send away suspected aliens. This is understood to be meant for Volney and Collot. But it will not stop there when it gets into a course of execution. There is now only wanting to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, a sedition bill, which we shall certainly soon see proposed. The object of that is the suppression of the Whig presses. Bache has been particularly named. That paper, and also Carey's, totter for want of subscriptions. We should really exert ourselves to procure them, for if these papers fall, Republicanism will be entirely brow-beaten." "The popular movement in the Eastern States is checked as we expected, and war addresses are showering in from New Jersey and the great trading towns. However, we still trust that a nearer view of war and a land tax will oblige the great mass of the people to attend. At pres ent the war-hawks talk of Septembrizing, deportation. and the examples for quelling sedition set by the French executive. All the firmness of the human mind is now in a state of requisition."

Bache's paper, for which Jefferson expressed so much anxiety, was at this moment, during Bache's temporary absence, under the editorial charge of Callender, whc filled it with all sorts of falsehoods and slanders against the leading Federalists. His personal adventures, not long after, gave occasion to much sport among the Federal editors. Though quite disgusting in his manners and habits, he was invited by Mason, the Virginia sen ator, to honor him with a visit at his house, near Alex andria, which he accordingly did shortly after the term

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ination of the session of Congress. Soon after his ar CHAPTER rival there, he was taken up in the purlieus of a neighboring distillery, drunk and dirty, and carried before two 1798 justices of the peace, under the Virginia vagrant act, on suspicion of being a runaway from the Baltimore penal wheelbarrow gang; nor could he obtain his release till Mason, his host, produced before the justices the letters of naturalization which the terrors of the alien law had induced Callender to take out, testifying, also, that he was a person of good character. Not long after, under the patronage of some leading Virginia politicians, Callender established at Richmond an opposition paper called the Examiner. Sufficient reasons will shortly appear for having been thus particular as to his personal history.

The present Federal majority in the House was not so much owing to any accession of their numbers,-though some few, like Parker, did change their politics, while others, like Smith of Maryland, voted occasionally with the Federalists, -as to absence or inaction on the other side, several opposition members omitting to vote. But while most of the other leaders thus surrendered at discretion or retired from the field, Gallatin still stood firm, resisting, by all the arts and manoeuvres of an adroit politician, everything proposed by the Federalists, and, maintaining to its fullest extent the policy recommended by Jefferson of patiently submitting to the insults and injuries of France without the least effort at resistance or defence.

The Senate bill for raising a provisional army underwent some modifications to meet the objections of the opposition in the House. In the shape in which it was finally passed, it authorized the president, at any time. within three years, in the event of a declaration of war against the United States, or of actual invasion of their

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CHAPTER territory by a foreign power, or imminent danger of such invasion before the next session of Congress, to en 1793. list ten thousand men (half the number originally proposed), to serve for a term not exceeding three years, and to be entitled to a bounty of ten dollars, half of it on en listing, and the other half on joining their corps. As a substitute for the other ten thousand, the president was authorized to accept the services of such volunteer corps as might offer, the whole to be organized as cavalry, artillery, and infantry, according to the exigencies of the service, with a suitable number of major generals conformably to the existing military establishment. He was also authorized to appoint a lieutenant-general, and an inspector with the rank of major-general. No officer was to have any pay except while in actual service, and all might be discharged, together with the soldiers, whenever the president might deem the public safety to permit it.

The opposition complained loudly of the vast discretion thus given to the president, and they denied that any danger of invasion existed. It was argued, on the other side, that Victor Hugues, the French commissary in the Carribee Islands, might land at any time on the coast of the Southern States with five or six thousand of his en franchised black soldiers from Guadaloupe, thereby endangering a servile insurrection. Indeed, who knew how soon a detachment of the fleet and army collected at Bordeaux and Brest, nominally for the invasion of England, might suddenly appear, perhaps under Bonaparte himself, on the American coast?

The bill for a provisional army was speedily followed up by another, which was strongly opposed as placing the country in an actual state of war, and by which the president was authorized to instruct the commanders of

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the ships of war of the United States to seize and bring CHAPTER into port, to be proceeded against according to the law of nations, any armed vessel which might have com- 1798. mitted depredations on American ships, or which might be found hovering on the American coast for the purpose of committing such depredations, and to retake any American ship taken by such vessels.

Meanwhile the House had under discussion a bill for amending the naturalization law, the "citizen's bill" alluded to in the above-quoted letter of Jefferson's. The greater part of the immigrants to the United States since the adoption of the Federal Constitution had been either Frenchmen whom political troubles had driven from home, and most of whom, even those who had been obliged to fly because they had been charged with being aristocrats, still remained warmly attached to their native country, the military glory and victories of the French republic having served, even in their minds, to veil its injustice and its crimes, or else Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, who had espoused ultra Republican opinions, and who, in flying from the severe measures of repression adopted against them at home, brought to America a furious hatred of the government and institutions of Great Britain, and warm admiration. and hearty good wishes for Republican France. Many of them, in fact, had been engaged in schemes more or less illegal, such as that of the United Irishmen, for co-oper ating with expected aid from France in the overturn of the British government. There were some among these immigrants, such, for example, as Priestley, of unblemished character and noble aims, however enthusiastic they might be, and, on some points, mistaken in their politics; but a large number were desperate and violent men, whose idea of freedom seemed to be the unrestrain

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CHAPTER ed indulgence of their own fierce passions and hatreds Many were persons of considerable literary qualifications; 1798. indeed, several of them had fled, like Callender, to escape punishment for alleged seditious libels against the British government. Having been journalists or pamphleteers at home, they found employment here in that capacity, and a very large proportion of the journals in the Middle and Southern States were edited by persons of this description. In admiration for France and hatred of Great Britain, they strongly sympathized with the ultra Democratic party, whose passions their writings contributed not a little to embitter and inflame; and having obtained by naturalization the rights of citizenship, they led off among the fiercest opponents of the national administration, all as voters, and some as candidates. No objection was made by any body to the enjoyment by foreigners of all rights except political ones; but the government of the country, it was thought by many, ought to be in the hands of the native citizens. Harper wished to provide that none except natives should enjoy the rights of citizenship. Otis suggested that the ob ject in view might be sufficiently obtained by depriving naturalized citizens of the right to hold office. But to both these propositions the decisive objection was made, that the naturalization of foreigners and their holding office were things contemplated in and provided for by the Federal Constitution, so that nothing remained ex cept to diminish the facility with which immigrants from abroad might obtain the character of citizens.

In addition to restraints upon the facility of naturalization, it was also thought necessary, as a part of the system of defense then under consideration, to vest a power somewhere to send out of the country such foreign residents as might reasonably be suspected of co-opera

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