CHAPTER IX.
Congress was summoned to meet in extra session September 19, by a proclamation issued August 8, before the capture of Washington. On the appointed day the members appeared, but found their building in ashes, and met like vagrants, without a shelter they could call their own. The President caused the only public office that had been spared, to be fitted for their use. Partly owing to the exertions of Dr. Thornton, the head of the Bureau of Patents, partly owing to the tornado of August 25, the building used as Post and Patent Office was not burned. There Congress was obliged to hold its sessions, in such discomfort as it had never before known.
The President sent his Annual Message September 20, which informed Congress that it had been specially summoned to supply “any inadequacy in the existing provision for the wants of the Treasury,” as well as to be ready for whatever result might be reached by the negotiation at Ghent. Two thirds of the Message related to the operations of war, and the President seemed rather disposed to suppress than to avow his difficulties, but the little he said of them was heavy with anxiety. He announced that July 1 five million dollars remained in the Treasury, and that “large sums” must be provided; but he did not add that the loan had failed, or that the banks and Treasury had suspended specie payments. He did not say that the regular army and the militia system were inadequate to national defence; but he declared “the necessity of immediate measures for filling the ranks of the regular army,” and of giving “the requisite energy and efficiency” to the militia:—
“From this view of the national affairs Congress will be urged to take up, without delay, as well the subject of pecuniary supplies as that of military force, and on a scale commensurate with the extent and the character which the war has assumed. It is not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for its greatest efforts.... From such an adversary, hostility in its greatest force and in its worst forms may be looked for.”
The President threw on the Secretaries of the Treasury and of War the ungrateful task of announcing the details of their need. Secretary Campbell was first to address Congress, and the tone of his report on the state of the finances received emphasis from the resignation which he sent at the same time to the President. Campbell’s annual report of September 23 was an admission of incompetence. He had paid, he said, nearly twenty millions from the Treasury between January and July; twenty-seven millions more were payable between July and the following January. For the year 1815 the Treasury would require at least as much as for 1814. Congress must therefore speedily provide at least seventy-four millions for the service between July 1, 1814, and Dec. 31, 1815. He ventured to suggest no means of obtaining this sum, or any amount approaching it.
July 1 the Treasury contained $4,722,000. From its various sources of revenue it could expect $4,840,000 during the remainder of the year; from loans already contracted, $4,320,000. In all, $13,822,000 might be considered as in hand, which was one half the sum immediately required. For the year 1815 the revenue in all its branches might produce $8,200,000, leaving $39,000,000 to be provided. Twenty-two millions were the extent of Campbell’s resources, but fifty-two million dollars more must be raised merely to carry on the government as it had been administered in the past year.
The plan of finance adopted by Gallatin at the outset of the war assumed that all deficits could be covered by loans.
“The experience of the present year,” said Campbell, “furnishes ground to doubt whether this be practicable, at least in the shape in which loans have hitherto been attempted. Nor is it even certain that the establishing and pledging of revenues adequate to the punctual payment of the interest and eventual reimbursement of the principal of the sums which will be required for the year 1815, would enable the Treasury to obtain them through the medium of loans effected in the ordinary way.”
Loans being impracticable, Campbell discussed the possibility of using Treasury notes. Eight millions were already in issue, and of these more than four millions would fall due before December 31. Campbell considered that six millions in Treasury notes was about as large a sum as could easily be circulated, but by issuing notes of small denominations he hoped to raise the amount to ten millions.
From all sources Campbell hoped to obtain about twenty-four million dollars of the seventy-four millions required. For the remaining fifty millions he had no suggestion to offer. The means for new and extraordinary exertions, he said, “ought to be provided.” He declared that the resources of the nation were ample,—which was true, but was also the most discouraging symptom of the time; for if the people, with ample resources, as he asserted, refused to come to the support of their own government on any terms, their decision must be accepted as final. Besides throwing upon Congress all these difficulties, without a suggestion of his own, Campbell added that Congress would be required to exert its powers to remedy the evils of the currency and the suspension of specie payments.
Congress on hearing this financial statement regarded the situation as desperate. “Tell Dr. Madison,” Senator Lacock was reported[354] to have said to the President’s private secretary, “that we are now willing to submit to his Philadelphia lawyer for head of the Treasury. The public patient is so very sick that we must swallow anything, however nauseous.” Dallas was nominated October 5, and confirmed the next day without opposition, as Secretary of the Treasury. No stronger proof could have been given of the helplessness of Congress, for Dallas was a man who under no other circumstances could have obtained a ray of popular favor.
Dallas’s character was high, his abilities undoubted, his experience large; but for ten years he had been one of the least popular men in Pennsylvania, the target of newspaper abuse and the champion of political independence. The people reasonably required that their leaders should more or less resemble some popular type, and if the result was monotonous the fault was in the society, not in its politics or its politicians; but Dallas was like no ordinary type in any people. His tone of intellectual and social superiority, his powdered hair, old-fashioned dress and refined manners, his free habits of expense, and the insubordination even more than the vivacity of his temper irritated the prejudices of his party.[355] He had little respect for Presidents, and none for Congress. For Jefferson and Virginia doctrines he felt distrust, which was returned. Earnest in temper and emphatic in tone, even to the point of tears and tropical excitability, Dallas came to Washington as though to lead a forlorn hope,—caring little for parties and less for ambition, but bent upon restoring to the government the powers that his friend Gallatin, too easily as he thought, had allowed to slip from its grasp.
The difficulties of the Treasury when Dallas took charge of it were not easily exaggerated. His own description,[356] given some six weeks afterward, made no disguise of them. “The Treasury,” he said, “was suffering under every kind of embarrassment. The demands upon it were great in amount, while the means to satisfy them were comparatively small, precarious in collection, and difficult in their application.... The means consisted, first, of the fragment of an authority to borrow money when nobody was disposed to lend, and to issue Treasury notes which none but necessitous creditors or contractors in distress ... seemed willing to accept;” second, of bank-credits, chiefly in the South and West, rendered largely useless by the suspension of specie payments; third, of the current receipts of taxes, also useless because paid chiefly in Treasury notes. The Treasury was bankrupt. The formal stoppage of payments in interest on the debt was announced, November 9, by an official letter from the secretary, notifying holders of government securities in Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations, and that “the government was unable to avert or to control this course of events.”[357] After that date the Treasury made no further pretence of solvency.
From this situation the government could be rescued only by a great effort; and obviously the currency must be first restored, for until some system of exchange could be established, every increase of taxation would merely increase unavailable bank deposits. Fifty millions of Southern bank-notes, locked in the vaults of Southern banks, would not pay the over-due interest on government bonds at Boston.
To this subject every one turned, but the schemes that seemed to have a chance of adoption were only two. The first came from President Jefferson, and was strongly pressed by the South. As Jefferson explained it, the plan seemed as simple as his plans were apt to be; he proposed to issue twenty millions in promissory notes every year as long as might be necessary. “Our experience,” he told the President,[358] “has proved it Obviously the insuperable obstacle to this plan was the paper money of the State banks, which already stood at discounts varying from ten to fifty per cent in specie, and in any large quantity could not be discounted at all. Until private paper should be abolished, public or government paper could not be brought into common use. Jefferson’s views on this, as on the whole subject, were interesting. “The banks have discontinued themselves,” he explained.[359] “We are now without any medium; and necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make us all eager to receive Treasury notes if founded on specific taxes. Congress may now borrow of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes of proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money.... The State legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment; and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices.” Instead of “banks of discount,” Jefferson probably meant to say banks of issue, although the Virginia school was hostile to all banks, and possibly he wished to destroy the whole system. If the scheme were adopted, twenty million dollars in paper money would not supply the wants of the Treasury, which required at least fifty millions within a year. The resource was limited, even if the States could be compelled to stop the issue of private notes,—which was extremely doubtful in the temper of Massachusetts and with the leanings of Chief-Justice Marshall. Jefferson did not touch upon legal tender; but the assumption of power implied in the issue of paper money seemed to require that the government should exercise the right of obliging its creditors to accept it. The actual interest-bearing Treasury notes stood then at a discount of about twenty per cent. The proposed paper money could hardly circulate at a better rate, and coin was not to be obtained. Under such conditions the notes must be a forced currency if they were to circulate at all. The scheme was reported to the House by the Committee of Ways and Means through its chairman, John W. Eppes, Jefferson’s son-in-law.[360] For the report Eppes was alone responsible, and the plan in his hands varied in some points from that of Jefferson. Starting from the admitted premise that loans were not to be obtained, and that money could not be transferred from one point to another in any existing medium at the disposition of government, Eppes proposed to issue Treasury notes “in sums sufficiently small for the ordinary purposes of society,” which were not to be made payable on demand in coin, but might at any time be exchanged for eight per cent bonds, and were to be received “in all payments for public lands and taxes.” Nothing was said of legal tender, or of driving bank-notes from circulation; but Eppes proposed to double the taxes at one stroke. Eppes’s scheme lost the advantages of Jefferson’s without gaining any of its own. It abandoned the hope of abolishing bank paper; and in want of such a restraint on private issues, the proposed government paper would merely add one more element of confusion to the chaos already existing. Eppes further altered Jefferson’s plan by adding some ten millions instead of two millions to the burden of taxation; but even Jefferson protested that this part of the scheme was impracticable. “This is a dashing proposition,” he wrote to Monroe;[361] “but if Congress pass it, I shall consider it sufficient evidence that their constituents generally can pay the tax. No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will. But without either market or medium, I know not how it is to be done. All markets abroad and all at home are shut to us, so that we have been feeding our horses on wheat. Before the day of collection, bank-notes will be but as oak-leaves; and of specie there is not within all the United States one half of the proposed amount of the taxes.” This was the situation of the Virginia scheme when Dallas took the matter in hand. Immediately after entering into office, Dallas wrote to Eppes an official letter, dated October 17, expressing views wholly at variance with the Virginia plan. “Under favorable circumstances and to a limited extent,” he said,[362] “an emission of Treasury notes would probably afford relief; but Treasury notes are an expensive and precarious substitute either for coin or for bank-notes, charged as they are with a growing interest, productive of no countervailing profit or emolument, and exposed to every breath of popular prejudice or alarm. The establishment of a national institution operating upon credit combined with capital, and regulated by prudence and good faith, is after all the only efficient remedy for the disordered condition of our circulating medium. While accomplishing that object, too, there will be found under the auspices of such an institution a safe depository for the public treasure and a constant auxiliary to the public credit. But whether the issues of a paper currency proceed from the national Treasury or from a national Bank, the acceptance of the paper in a course of payments and receipts must be forever optional with the citizens. The extremity of that day cannot be anticipated when any honest and enlightened statesman will again venture upon the desperate expedient of a tender-law.” Without a tender-law the Virginia scheme would hardly answer the purposes required, since the government must restrain the issue of paper within a limit too narrow for usefulness. Dallas did not press this point, but developed his own scheme, which required, like that of Eppes, a duplication of taxes to produce twenty-one million dollars, and the creation of a national Bank with a capital of fifty million dollars. Either Eppes’s or Dallas’s plan might answer the immediate object of providing a currency, and both required the exercise of implied powers by Congress. Apparently Congress had only to choose, but in truth choice was most difficult. The House readily adopted Dallas’s recommendation in principle, and voted, October 24, by sixty-six to forty, that it was expedient to establish a national Bank; but the problem of establishing a specie-paying bank without specie passed its powers. Dallas abandoned the attempt at the outset. He proposed a bank of fifty millions capital, of which forty-four millions might be subscribed in government bonds and Treasury notes, and six millions in coin. The bank was at once to lend to government thirty millions,—of course in bank-notes,—and no one denied that an immediate suspension of specie payments must follow such an issue. To any bank, strong or weak, the old Virginia influence represented by Eppes was hostile; and to a bank insolvent from the start the Federalists also were opposed. When the bill, reported November 7, was printed, it was found to contain a provision authorizing the suspension of specie payments at the President’s discretion. The discussion began November 14, and every successive day revealed objections and increased the opposition. Calhoun complicated the subject still further by bringing forward, November 16, a plan of his own, requiring the capital to consist “one tenth in specie, and the remainder in specie or in Treasury notes to be hereafter issued,” and taking away all government control. Ingham of Pennsylvania, representing Dallas, combated Calhoun with force, but could not make his own measure agreeable to the House. His phrase in regard to the suspension of specie payments was significant. Congress, he said, would be to blame for “frantic enthusiasm” if it did not provide for the case. “It may happen, and probably will happen, that their specie payments cannot be continued, and what will then be the situation of the bank? Failing to fulfil the purposes designed, its credit is blighted, its operations are stopped, and its charter violated; and if this should take place before your Treasury notes are sold, the government will scarce obtain a moment’s relief.” That the new bank could not pay specie was obvious. The Bank of England itself could not pay specie, and had not attempted to do so for nearly twenty years. The House in committee adopted Calhoun’s amendment by a majority of about sixty, in spite of Ingham’s opposition; and thus substituted for Dallas’s scheme a large private bank, over which the government was to exercise no control, with a capital of fifty millions, nine tenths of which were to be Treasury notes. The House then discovered so many unforeseen difficulties, that November 25 it recommitted the bill to a select committee, of which Lowndes, Calhoun, Ingham, Forsyth, and two Federalists were members. Dallas was obliged openly to enter the lists against Calhoun, and wrote to the committee a letter, dated November 27,[363] sounding like a defiance: “The dividend on the funded debt has not been punctually paid; a large amount of Treasury notes has already been dishonored; and the hope of preventing further injury and reproach in transacting business with the Treasury is too visionary to afford a moment’s consolation.” Calhoun’s scheme, he plainly intimated, was impracticable and mischievous. The next day, November 28, Lowndes brought back Calhoun’s bill to the House, together with Dallas’s letter, and told the House that the committee could come to no agreement. Upon this admission of helplessness, Hanson addressed the House in a speech which seemed to carry Federalist exultation to the extremest point. Protesting his anxiety to defend the country, Hanson uttered a cry of triumph over the destruction of the government:— “Not only had government bills been dishonored and the interest of the public debt remained unpaid, but ... so completely empty was the Treasury and destitute of credit, that funds could not be obtained to defray the current ordinary expenses of the different Departments. Disgraceful, humiliating as the fact was, it ought not to be concealed from the nation, and he felt it his duty to state to the House that the Department of State was so bare of money as to be unable to pay even its stationery bill. The government was subsisting upon the drainings of unchartered banks in the District, which felt themselves compelled to contribute their means lest the rod in terrorem which was held over them should be applied, and an Act of incorporation refused.” No one contradicted or answered Hanson. The House wavered in incapacity that suggested dissolution. At last Richard M. Johnson, in order to force a decision right or wrong, moved the previous question and brought the House to a vote. Then the majority turned against Calhoun, as they had before turned against Dallas, and rejected the bill by a vote of one hundred and four to forty-nine. The Southern preference for government paper currency lay at the bottom of Calhoun’s scheme as of Jefferson’s, and seemed to Dallas to combine ignorance with dishonesty. Treasury notes bearing interest could not be made to serve as a currency, and were useless as a foundation for government paper. “What use is there,” asked Ingersoll,[364] “in such a mass of banking machinery to give circulation to some millions of Treasury notes? Why not issue them at once without this unwieldy, this unnecessary medium?” Yet when Bolling Hall of Georgia, in pursuance of Macon’s aphorism that “paper money never was beat,” moved, November 12, Resolutions authorizing the issue of Treasury notes as legal tender, the House refused to consider it by a vote of ninety-five to forty-two. Eppes did not vote; Calhoun voted against it, and of the twenty-five Southern members who supported it Macon and Stanford were the most prominent. Nothing could be plainer than that the House must ultimately come to inconvertible government paper, whether issued by the Treasury or by a Bank. Dallas, Eppes, and Calhoun were all agreed on that point, if on no other; but after Congress had sat two months and a half, the House was no nearer a decision than when it met. The Federalists, voting at one time with Calhoun, at another with Dallas, were able to paralyze action. Eppes wrote to Dallas, December 2, inviting further information; and Dallas wrote back the same day, recounting the needs of the Treasury for the current month, merely on account of the national debt. Dallas reported that $5,726,000 in Treasury notes and dividends were due, or would fall due by January 1; and that including unavailable bank-credits, and subject to possible contingencies, the Treasury might contain resources to meet these demands to the amount of $3,972,000.[365] Eppes could do no more for immediate relief than report a bill for the issue of some ten millions more of interest-bearing Treasury notes, which was passed without debate and became law, December 26, without improving the situation. The House also passed the heavy tax-bills without much opposition except from Federalists who wished to stop military operations on the part of the government. Between thirty and forty members, or about one half of the Federalists, carried their opposition to that point. The bill raising the direct tax to six million dollars passed the House, December 22, by a vote of one hundred and six to fifty-three, and passed the Senate, January 5, 1815, by twenty-three to seven. Dallas and Eppes hoped to raise about twenty million dollars through the new taxation, or twice what had been previously attempted. Jefferson held that these taxes could not be paid, and expressed his opinion without reserve. “If anything could revolt our citizens against the war,” wrote Jefferson, November 28,[366] “it would be the extravagance with which they are about to be taxed.... The taxes proposed cannot be paid. How can a people who cannot get fifty cents a bushel for their wheat, while they pay twelve dollars a bushel for their salt, pay five times the amount of taxes they ever paid before? Yet this will be the case in all the States south of the Potomac.” If any conclusion was intended to be drawn from the official return[367] sent to Congress, October 13, of internal taxes received to that date in each State, the evil predicted by Jefferson seemed already to exist. In Massachusetts, of taxes to the amount of $200,000, accrued for the first two quarters of the year, $170,000 had been received before October 10. In New York $393,000 had accrued, and $303,000 had been received; thus New York was nearly one fourth in arrears. Pennsylvania was worse; of $470,000 accrued the government had received $280,000,—leaving two fifths in arrears. Virginia was in somewhat worse condition than Pennsylvania; of $247,000 accrued $136,000 had been paid,—leaving four ninths in arrears. Yet Pennsylvania and Virginia paid taxes in their own depreciated bank paper, while New York and New England paid chiefly in Treasury notes. The new taxes were still to be paid in the same medium, although the laws gave no express authority for it. In the next Congress, when the subject was discussed, Wright of Maryland said:[368] “When Congress passed the revenue laws and imposed the six million and three million land tax, did they contemplate the payment of specie? No! they knew the people had it not, and of course could not pay it.... Does any man doubt that Congress intended these taxes being paid in bank paper? Nay, has not the Secretary of the Treasury ... sealed this construction of the law by taking the bank paper in discharge for these taxes?” That the bank paper was worth less than Treasury notes was shown by the Southern States paying their taxes in such paper, when they might equally well have paid them in Treasury notes except for the difference in value. The medium of depreciated and depreciating bank paper in which the taxes were to be paid, secured the States outside of New England from intolerable pressure by giving the means of indefinite depreciation; but to the government such a resource meant merely a larger variety of bank-credits, which were of no certain value even in the towns where the banks existed, and were of no value at all elsewhere. The burden of taxation would be thrown chiefly on New England; and if the Hartford Convention did nothing else, it was sure to take measures for sequestering the proceeds of taxation in New England for military purposes. The hope of restoring the finances by taxation was faint. Until the currency could be established and exchanges made secure, the government was helpless. The House having broken down November 28, the Senate next took the matter in hand. Rufus King reported, December 2, a bill to incorporate a bank, which was in effect the bill recommended by Dallas. After a week’s consideration the Senate passed the bill, December 9, by the vote of seventeen to fourteen,—King and the Federalists, with four Republican senators, voting against it. The House referred it to the Committee of Ways and Means, which reported it, December 14, with amendments. The debate began December 23, and was cut short December 27 by C. J. Ingersoll, who by the close vote of seventy-two to seventy obliged the House to call for the previous question, and order the bill to its third reading. This energy was followed by a reaction; the bill was recommitted for amendment, again reported, and vehemently attacked. Never had the House shown itself more feeble. The Federalists took the lead in debate; and January 2 Daniel Webster, in a speech that placed him at the head of the orators of the time, dictated the action of Congress:— “What sort of an institution, sir, is this? It looks less like a bank than like a department of government. It will be properly the paper-money department. Its capital is government debts; the amount of issues will depend on government necessities; government in effect absolves itself from its own debts to the bank, and by way of compensation absolves the bank from its own contracts with others. This is indeed a wonderful scheme of finance. The government is to grow rich because it is to borrow without the obligation of repaying, and is to borrow of a bank which issues paper without the liability to redeem it.... They provide for an unlimited issue of paper in an entire exemption from payment. They found their bank in the first place on the discredit of government, and then hope to enrich government out of the insolvency of the bank.” Webster was a master of antithesis, and the proposed bank was in effect what he described; but had he been a member of the British Parliament he might have made the same objections, with little alteration, to the Bank of England. The Hartford Convention was in session while he spoke. Every word of his speech was a shock to the government and the Union, for his only suggestion was equivalent to doing nothing. He moved to instruct the committee to report a bill creating a bank with thirty millions of capital, composed one fourth of specie and three fourths of government securities; without power to suspend specie payments, and without obligation to lend three fifths of its capital to the government. To such a bank he would give his support, “not as a measure of temporary policy, or an expedient to find means of relief from the present poverty of the Treasury,” but as an institution most useful in times of peace. The House came to a vote the same day, and divided eighty-one to eighty. Then the Speaker, Langdon Cheves, rose, and after denouncing the proposed bank as “a dangerous, unexampled, and he might almost say a desperate resort,” gave his casting vote against the bill. No sooner had the House struck this blow at Dallas than it shrank back. The next day, amid complaints and objections, it reconsidered its matured decision by the sudden majority of one hundred and seven to fifty-four. Once more the bill was recommitted, and once more reported, January 6, in the form that Webster proposed. Weary of their own instability, the majority hastened to vote. Most of the Federalists supported the bill; but Grosvenor of New York, one of the ablest, frankly said what every one felt, that the proposed institution could not be a specie bank, or get a million of its notes into circulation. “The government relying on it would be disappointed, and ruin soon stare them in the face.” With this understanding the House passed the bill, January 7, by a vote of one hundred and twenty to thirty-eight; and the Senate, after a struggle with the House, accepted it, January 20, by a vote of twenty to fourteen. Dallas was not a man to be easily daunted even in so desperate a situation. After ten days deliberation, the President sent to Congress a veto message. “The most the bank could effect,” said Madison, “and the most it could be expected to aim at, would be to keep the institution alive by limited and local transactions ... until a change from war to peace should enable it, by a flow of specie into its vaults and a removal of the external demand for it, to derive its contemplated emoluments from a safe and full extension of its operations.” “I hope this will satisfy our friends,” wrote Webster to his brother,[369] “that it was not a bank likely to favor the Administration.” Either with or without such a bank, the Administration was equally helpless. The veto left the Treasury, February 1, without a resource in prospect. The unsatisfied demands reached nearly twenty millions. The cash balance, chiefly in bank-credits, was little more than six millions. A further deficit of forty millions remained to be provided above the estimated revenue of 1815. United States six-per-cents commanded only a nominal price, between fifty and sixty cents on the dollar,[370] and were quoted in Boston at a discount of forty cents.[371] Treasury notes being in demand for taxes, were worth about seventy-five cents in the dollar. Dallas had no serious hope of carrying on the government. In a letter to the Committee of Ways and Means, dated January 17, he could only propose to add six millions more to the taxes, issue fifteen millions in Treasury notes, and borrow twenty-five millions on any terms that could be obtained. In making these recommendations he avowed in grave words his want of confidence in their result:[372]— “In making the present communication I feel, sir, that I have performed my duty to the Legislature and to the country; but when I perceive that more than forty millions of dollars must be raised for the service of the year 1815, by an appeal to public credit through the medium of the Treasury notes and loans, I am not without sensations of extreme solicitude.” Young George Ticknor of Boston happened to be in the gallery of the House of Representatives when Eppes read this letter, January 21, and the next day he wrote,[373]— “The last remarkable event in the history of this remarkable Congress is Dallas’s report. You can imagine nothing like the dismay with which it has filled the Democratic party. All his former communications were but emollients and palliations compared with this final disclosure of the bankruptcy of the nation. Mr. Eppes as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, read it in his place yesterday, and when he had finished, threw it upon the table with expressive violence, and turning round to Mr. Gaston, asked him with a bitter levity between jest and earnest,— “‘Well, sir! will your party take the government if we will give it up to them?’ “‘No, sir!’ said Gaston; ... ‘No, sir! Not unless you will give it to us as we gave it to you!’”