Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER X

THE FIRST CONGRESS

The confederate Congress, at its final session in 1788, had fixed the time for the election of President and Vice-President under the Constitution, and the tiress of the new government The day appointed was the first Wednesday of the following March, and, as that date fell on the fourth of the month, a precedent was established which has ever since been observed in the installation of a new President The place was not so easily determined The choice lay between New York and Philadelphia, and the struggle was prolonged, not because the question of the teovernment was of ht have upon the future settlement of the perress was present at New York on March 4, 1789, and neither house was organized until early in April On the 23rd Washi+ngton arrived; and on the 30th he took the oath of office as first President of the United States, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, a site now occupied by another building used as the subtreasury A week before, when the ceremonies proper for such an occasion were a subject of discussion in Congress, the question of fitting titles for the President and Vice-President came up for consideration It was decided that when the President arrived the Vice-President should meet him at the door of the senate chamber, lead him to the chair, and then, in a formal address, inform him that the two houses were ready to witness the administration of the oath of office ”Upon this,” says John Adams in a letter written three years afterward, ”I arose in my place and asked the advice of the Senate, in what form I should address hiton,' 'Mr President,' 'Sir,' 'May it please your Excellency,' or what else? I observed that it had been common while he commanded the army to call him 'His Excellency,' but I was free to own it would appear to ive him no title but 'Sir,' or 'Mr President,' than to put hiovernor of Berovernor of any one of our States”

Thereupon the question went to a conference committee of both houses, who reported that no other title would be proper for either President or Vice-President, at any tiiven by the Constitution To this report the Senate disagreed and appointed a new committee This proposed that the President should be called ”His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties” When wise ative

The Senate accepted the report, but the House had the good sense to reject it, consenting, however, to leave the question in abeyance On these proceedings Mr Madison thus commented in a letter to Jefferson:--

”My last inclosed copies of the President's inaugural speech, and the answer of the House of Representatives I now add the answer of the Senate It will not have escaped you that the fore Washi+ngton, President of the United States The latter follows the example, with the omission of the personal name, but without any other than the constitutional title The proceeding on this point was, in the House of Representatives, spontaneous The imitation by the Senate was extorted The question became a serious one between the two houses J Adareat earnestness His friend, R H Lee, although elected as a republican enemy to an aristocratic Constitution, was a hness the President of the United States and the Protector of their Liberties Had the project succeeded, it would have subjected the President to a severe dileovernton has so for the title of ”His Highness,” and of having suggested it Had this been true, Madison would have been certain to know it, and he was quite incapable of asserting in that case that such a title would have been to the President ”a severe dileht easily have been, since he was not a member of the Senate, and probably heard only a confused report of how the question was brought before that body As Mr Adae as a calu to his own statement, no other opinion than that he preferred ”Sir,” or ”Mr President,” as a more proper address than ”Excellency,” a title then, as now, pertaining to governors of States He probably took no further part in the debate, but it is not impossible that he her title than either ”Mr President” or ”Your Excellency” ”For,” he said in the explanatory letter to his friend, ”I freely own that I think decent and moderate titles, as distinctions of offices, are not only harmless, but useful in society; and that in this country, where I know theistrates as highly as by any people or any istrates in the world, I should think soovernovernh if there were to be any titles whatever; but certainly they were the wiser who preferred good hos of that sort beento reflect upon the absurdities to which the national fondness for titles would have carried us

Froh the House of Representatives h present to ht before the House, except that relating to its organization, was introduced by Madison, two days after the inauguration It was a proposition to raise a revenue by duties on ie duty on all vessels, Aoods, wares, or merchandise into the United States The essential weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of all, to be reulation of trade Revenue overnment, and that in a hich should not be oppressive to the people Coht to be as free as the policy of nations will adovernment must be supported, and taxes the least burdensome and most easily collected are those derived froreed, however, as he said on the second day of the debate, with those ould so adjust the duties on foreign goods as to protect the ”infant manufactories” of the country With little interruption this subject was debated for the first six weeks of the opening session of the First Congress No other could have been hit upon to test so thoroughly the strength of the new bond of union It was to brush aside all those trade regulations in the several States which each had hitherto thought essential to its prosperity Every interest in the country was to be considered, and their different, soland was sure that, should the tax on h, the distilleries would be shut up, and a great New England industry destroyed Nor would the injury stop there The fisheries, as well as the distilleries, would be ruined For three fifths of the fish put up for the West Indies could find no market anywhere else; and a market existed there only because e A prohibitory duty on that article, or a duty that should seriously interfere with its ih destroy the fisheries What then would become of the nursery of American sea What sadder picture than this of a New England without rum, without codfish, without seamen, and without shi+ps! One can easily conceive that even in that restrained and dignified First Congress there was no want of serious and alar talk frohtful and scholarly Ames, and the impulsive Gerry

Then the South, for her part, was alare duty should leave her tobacco, her rice and indigo, rotting in the fields and warehouses for want of shi+ps to take them to market She had no shi+ps of her own and could have none, and she invited the shi+ps of the rest of the world to co in return all she needed for her own consuland was as nothing to that of the Southern planter scanning the horizon eary eyes in vain for the sight of a sail, while behind hi to do That desolation seemed complete to the southernmost States when it was also proposed to levy a tax of ten dollars upon every slave imported In short, the whole subject bristled with difficulties

The proble, and at the saeneral good, while nobody's special interests were sacrificed The ”infant industries,” to which Mr Madison alluded, really received no special consideration in the final adjust They have grown stronger since, though they are ”infants” still; and they should never cease to be grateful to hiave them a name to live by for a hundred years

But the most remarkable part of the debate was that upon the proposition of Mr Parker of Virginia to iress of events have been foreseen, that proposal arded as meant to protect an ”infant industry” of the northernination then could not conceive of the domestic slave trade of a few years later, when a chief source of the prosperity of Virginia would be her perennial crop of young men and women to be shi+pped for New Orleans and a market But Mr

Parker had no ulterior ret that the Constitution had failed to prohibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and hoped that the duty he proposed would prevent, in soree, a traffic which he pronounced ”irrational and inhuinian of that day ould not have taken down his shotgun on hearing that there wereabout his kitchen doors in the hope of buying up the strongest young people of his household for export to the Southwest

Judging from the imperfect report of the debate upon the subject, it would seeain relative to the slave trade, made in the Constitutional Convention of two years before between New England and the two southernood Or there ain; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a tacit recognition of the eternal fitness of things, and islation threatened at the same time the distillery and the slave-shi+p[11] At any rate, the extreme Southerners expressed surprise at the audacity which would disturb a compromise of the Constitution; the extreme Northerners deprecated it as quite uncalled for in any consideration of the subject of revenue The principle of Mr Parker's ht, was to correct a moral evil; the principle of the bill before the House was to raise a revenue At so to consider the question of taxing the iround of humanity and policy; but it was a sufficient reason with hi it as an object of revenue that the burden would fall upon two States only Fisher Ames of Massachusetts could only take counsel of his conscience Fro, apparently, that this tax was provided for by the Constitution--he doubted whether i the practice” of trading in slaves This was his reason for wishi+ng to postpone the subject But Mr Liverenious still If the ioods, wares, or merchandise, they would coeneral rule of five per centum, which would be about the saoods, wares, or merchandise, then such importation could not properly be included in the consideration of the question of a revenue from duties on such articles of trade

Mr Madison caue, and brushed aside the sophistries of the New England allies of the slave traders If there were anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover this particular duty, it was easy to add it If the question was not one of taxation because it was one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to deal with it under any other bill for levying a duty as under this If the tax seele class, that would be a good reason for re If ten dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little calculation would show that it was only about the proposed _ad valorem_ duty of five per centum on most other importations ”It is to be hoped,” he added, ”that by expressing a national disapprobation of this trade we may destroy it, and save ourselves from reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with slaves” ”If there is any one point,” he continued, ”in which it is clearly the policy of this nation, so far as we constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining under soovernia and South Carolina as of any in the Union Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken and render them less capable of self-defense It is a necessary duty of the general governer, as well internal as external Everything, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet, if it involves national expense or safety, becomes of concern to every part of the Union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general adoverne Gerry of Massachusetts, supported this measure; and none froinia n slave trade was protected in the Constitution for twenty years by a bargain between the two southernland, so now the same influence staved off the imposition of the tax which was a part of the consideration to be given for that constitutional protection of the trade It is not a creditable fact; but it is, nevertheless, a fact and a representative one in the history of the United States And it is to Madison's great honor that he had neither part nor lot in it

After six weeks of earnest debate, an areement wasimported, except slaves from Africa It was literally a tariff for revenue; but it was a settle definitely, except that the provision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dollars on imported slaves should be a dead letter Thenceforth the policy of free trade was established, so far as African slaves were concerned, till the traffic was supposed to cease by constitutional liress in 1808[12]

The determination to protect the commercial interests of the country, beyond the point ofthe rate of duty upon tonnage than in duties upon ireed, after much debate, that American commerce had better be in American hands, and a difference of twenty cents a ton was n shi+ps, as aMr Madison proposed to ree to increase it to forty cents on shi+ps belonging to pohich the United States had no treaties

The Senate, however, refused to adn shi+ps should be subject to the sa treaties The House assented, lest the bill should be lost altogether This proposed differential duty on foreign vessels was as clearly aimed at Great Britain as if that power had been named in the bill Nor, indeed, was there any attempt at concealment; for it was openly avowed that Alish, who already largely controlled the commerce of the United States In the debates and in the final decision of the question is shown clearly enough the difference of opinion and of feeling, which soon reat parties of the first quarter of a century under the Constitution nobody then foresa bitter that difference of party was to be, nor what disastrous consequences would follow it

Mr Madison was a the ainst Great Britain He thought it should be nity no less than for the interest of the United States He had no fear, he said, ”of entering into a coland, he believed, could do this country no harm by any peaceful reprisals she could devise She supplied the United States with no article either of necessity or of luxury that the people of the United States could not licists” who did not agree with him, and who believed that it was in the power of Great Britain to hinder or to help immensely the prosperity of the United States It was not of so land should consent to free trade with her colonies; and on every account it iser to conciliate than to defy Great Britain; wiser to induce her to enter into a friendly commercial alliance than to provoke her to retaliate upon the feeble corip Madison had shown hies of a leaning toward England, and toward ress of petty states against those anted a strong national governlicism on one side, so there was quite as ood dealto Jefferson of the probability that the Senate would e duties, he said that in that case ”Great Britain will be quieted in the enjoyulate it, and France discouraged from her efforts at a competition which it is not less our interest than hers to proht of this first concession of the new govern party leader as the statesman who speaks here

It ht it to be, as he said, ”impolitic, in every view that can be taken of the subject, to put Great Britain at once on the footing of the most favored nation” But the relation of Alish interests was evidently already associated in his land, so soon to be the absorbing question in American politics

The impost act was followed by others hardly less i the new Constitution into operation under its first Congress The direction of business seems, by co the h familiarity with the Constitution, and of his s forward in their due order, to provide judiciously for the more immediate needs The impost bill secured the anize the machinery to do the work Resolutions to create the executive departn Affairs, of the Treasury, and of War were offered by Mr Madison These were required in general terle officer at the head of each, to be appointed by the President ”by and with the advice and consent of the Senate” The manner of the appointment of subordinate officers was provided for by the Constitution, but the manner of their removal froood behavior? Were the incumbents removable, with or without cause? If the power of removal existed, did it vest in the power that appointed, that is, in the President and Senate conjointly, or in the President alone?

As the Constitution was silent, the question had to be settled on its own ed, either on one side or the other, we are fa up as the question so often does in changes in state constitutions and municipal charters, and in the discussion of the necessity for civil service reform There is this essential difference, however, between now and then: we know the mischiefs that come from the power of official removal, which were then only died, Mr Madison believed, rightfully to the chiefman should find his way to that position and abuse the power intrusted to him, ”the wanton removal of meritorious officers would,” he said, ”subject the President to ih trust”

Lofty political principles like these may still be found in the platforms of modern political parties,--

”The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out”