Part 5 (2/2)
But Mr Madison believed, at least, that he believed in theion an accepted doctrine of justification by faith; and this, perhaps, sustained him when, twelve years later, as Jefferson's secretary of state, he learned froned,” party necessitiesthe law of nature Jefferson was a little tih to see Jackson boldly remove, in the course of his administration, about two thousand office-holders, whose places he wanted as rewards for his own political followers Froht not, if Madison's doctrine was sound, have been ih the Constitution had been adopted by the States, it was not without objections by some of them To meet these objections Mr Madison proposed twelve ahts, which, it was thought by inal articles This, also, was left to hie of the Constitution and of the points wherein it was still imperfect, as well as those wherein it had better not bedebate, were essentially those which he proposed, and in due time ten of them were ratified by the States The two that were not accepted referred only to the number of representatives in the House, and to the pay of ress
It was hoped that the selection of a place for the perress There was much talk of the centres of wealth, of territory, and of population then, and of where such centres ht be in the future But the question was really a sectional one The Northern ain out of doors with the ain, however, was only this: that, inasmuch as it was hopeless that the actual centre should be chosen as the site for a capital city, a place as near as possible to it should be insisted upon The South, on the other hand, deterovernment should be within the boundaries of the Southern States That was a foregone conclusion with theable river to the centre of population was the Delaware; but the jealousy of New York stood in the way of any selection that favored Philadelphia The Susquehanna was proposed It empties into Chesapeake Bay North of it was, as Mr
Sherman showed, a population of 1,400,000; and south of it, 1,200,000
The South wanted the capital on the Potomac, not because it was the centre of population then, but because it rowth of the West On the other hand, it was insisted that the population south of the Potomac was then only 960,000, while north of it there were 1,680,000 people, and that it was no more accessible from the West than the Susquehanna was To reat future of the West seemed hardly worthy of consideration It was ”an unmeasurable wilderness,” and ”when it would be settled was past calculation,” Fisher Ames said ”It was,” he added, ”perfectly romantic to make this decision depend upon that circumstance Probably it will be near a century before these people will be considerable” He was nearer right when he said in the same speech ”that trade and manufactures will accumulate people in the Eastern States in proportion of five to three, compared with the Southern The disproportion will, doubtless, continue to be reater at present, for the clied to be unfavorable to population, so that husbandry as well as coive more people in the Eastern than in the Southern States” It was, however, finally resolved by the House ”that the perht to be at some convenient place on the banks of the river Susquehanna in the State of Pennsylvania;” and a bill accordingly was sent to the Senate
Had the Senate agreed to this bill, there are soes of American history that would never have been written; for the progress of events would have taken quite another direction had the influences surrounding the national capital for the first half of this century been Northern instead of Southern But the Senate did not agree For ”the convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna” it substituted tenone e of Gerreed, and there, but for Madison, the matter would have ended He had labored earnestly for the site on the Poto in that, he hoped to postpone the question till the next session of Congress, when the representatives from North Carolina would be present He moved a proviso that the laws of Pennsylvania should reress should otherwise provide by law It seelethat he saw no necessity for it At any rate, whether that was Mr Madison's ained, for it compelled the return of the bill to the Senate This was on September 28, and the next day the session was closed by adjourn January
When in that next session the bill came back from the Senate to the House, a member from South Carolina said, in the course of debate, that ”a Quaker State was a bad neighborhood for the South Carolinians” The Senate had also come to that conclusion, for the bill now proposed that the capital should be at Philadelphia for ten years only, and should then be removed to the banks of the Potole vote, for two Southern senators voted against it
But the two senators from North Carolina were now present, and the ained by gaining tih the House was possible, ”but attended with great difficulties” Did he kno these difficulties were to be overcome?
”If the Potomac succeeds,” he adds, ”it will have resulted froht never happen again”
What the ”fortuitous coincidence” was he does not explain; but the term was a felicitous euphuise of our ti”
The reader of this series of biographies is already familiar with Hamilton's skillful barter of votes for the Potoe for votes in favor of his scheme for the assunorant of the progress of that bargain, hich Jefferson was afterward so anxious to prove that he had nothing to do Madison earnestly opposed the assumption of the state debts from first to last; but, when he saw that the measure was sure to pass the House, he wrote to Monroe: ”I cannot deny that the crisis demands a spirit of accommodation to a certain extent If the measure should be adopted, I shall wish it to be considered as an unavoidable evil, and _possibly_ not the worst side of the dile to assent silently to what he believed to be a great injustice to several of the States, provided that the bargain should be a gain to his own State If Hamilton and Jefferson were sinners in this business, Madison will hardly pass for a saint
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting the carrying on the slave trade from American ports caress, ”Our distilleries andidle for want of an extended commerce He had been well inforland rum was much preferred to the best Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better price Why should it not be sent there, and a profitable return be made?
Why should a heavy fine and imprison on a trade so advantageous?” Sixty years later still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, as a land He was about to withdraw from it for want of time to attend to its duties,--had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,--when news cas of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry The resignation was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery Such is the irony of coincidence in naislation on this subject is a curious exeenuity hich any law obnoxious to the owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it could not be defeated by force of numbers In 1806 a final attempt was made to impose the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and a resolution passed in favor of it This was referred to a co in a bill A bill was reported and pushed so far as a third reading, when it was recommitted, which put it off for a year When it next appeared it was a bill for the prohibition of the importation of slaves, in accordance with the constitutional provision that the traffic should cease in 1808 The new question, after some debate, in which there was no allusion to the tax, was postponed for further consideration But it never again came before the House A month later, February 13, 1807, a bill fron slave trade should cease on the first day of the following January, was received and immediately concurred in, and that see of the whole subject No tax was ever paid; but the i the law to put an end to importation in 1808, continued at the rate, it was estimated, of about fifteen thousand a year Probably it never ceased altogether till the beginning of the rebellion of 1860]
CHAPTER XI
NATIONAL FINANCES--SLAVERY
Haress, as secretary of the treasury, was made at the second session in January, 1790 Near the close of the previous session a petition asking for some settlement of the public debt was received and referred to a committee of which Madison was chairman The committee reported in favor of the petition, and the House accordingly called upon the secretary to prepare a plan ”for the support of the public credit”
So far as Ha scheners, it was accepted without demur There could be no doubt that there the ostensible creditor was the real creditor, who should be paid in full The report assumed that this was equally true of the do a certificate of the indebtedness of the government, no matter how he came by it, nor at what price, was entitled to payment at its face value But here the question was raised, Was this ostensible creditor the sole creditor? Was he, whose necessities had cooverne discount when full payovernment was able to pay in full? Was it equity to let all the loss fall upon the original creditor, and all the gain go to hiinally, and had only assumed at small cost the risk of a profitable speculation? Moreover it was charged, and not denied, that in some of these speculations there had been no risk whatever; and that, so soon as the tenor of the report was known, fast-sailing vessels were dispatched froia to buy up public securities held by persons ignorant of their recent rapid rise in value As hitherto they had been worth only about fifteen cents on the dollar; as upon the publication of the secretary's report they had risen to fifty cents on the dollar; and as, if the secretary's advice should be taken, they would rise to a hundred cents on the dollar,--it would be securing what in the slang of the ents into the rural districts in advance of the news to buy up governnant,” exclaimed a member, ”at the avaricious and moral turpitude which so vile a conduct displays” Nor on that point did anybody venture then to disagree with him openly
But, besides the question as to ere in reality the public creditors, a doubt was also raised whether the debt ought to be paid in full to anybody Every dollar of the foreign debt was for an actual dollar borrowed But the doe amount for money borrowed, but in payoods purchased, for which double, or ed theencies of war had coovernment to promise to pay for fifty bushels of wheat the price of a hundred bushels, the creditor, now that the government was in a condition to redeem its promise, was not entitled in equity to receive more than the actual value of the fifty bushels at the time of the purchase Moreover, it was contended, there was no injustice in such a settleht to a successful end, for the benefit of the creditor as well as of everybody else The arguous in a measure to that used by a certain class of politicians in our tiht at a discount for ”greenbacks” during the late rebellion, should not be redeeold when the as over
The answer to all this was obvious The nationits debts to those who could present the evidence that they were its creditors If, when that was done, it could afford to be generous, itwith the certificates of debt at a discount The governo behind its own contracts The Constitution provided that ”all debts and engagements, entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution as under the Confederation” Here was a debt which the Confederation had contracted, and the federal governation of contracts” for its own benefit than the separate States had; and that they were expressly forbidden by the Constitution to do
Madison listened quietly day after day to the long and earnest debates upon the subject, and then advanced an entirely new proposition He agreed with one party inthe inviolability of contracts The Confederacy had incurred a debt to its own citizens which the new governreed with the other party that there was a question as to whom that debt was due Were those who now held the certificates entitled to the payh the cost to them was only somewhere from fifteen to fifty cents on the dollar? It was true that the original contract was transferable, and these present creditors held the evidence of the transfer But did that transfer entitle the holder to the full value without regard to the price paid for it? Was there not in equity a reserved right in the original holder, who, having given a full equivalent for the debt, had only parted with the evidence of it, under the coovernations? Was not this specially true in the case of the soldiers of the late war, to whose devotion and sacrifices the nation owed its existence?
Mr Madison thought that an affirmative reply to the last two queries would present the true view of the case, and he proposed, therefore, to pay both classes of creditors,--those who now held the evidence of indebtedness, acquired by purchase at no matter what price; and those who had parted with that evidence without receiving the aovernment had promised to pay for services rendered It was not, however, to be expected that the entire debt should be paid in full to both classes That was beyond the ability of the government But it would be an equitable settlehest price the certificates had ever reached, and to award the reinal creditors