Treaties of the American "Government" with the Governments of other countries were, to these wilderness subduers, vague and far-away engagements which surely never were meant to affect those on the outskirts of civilization; and most certainly could not reach the scattered dwellers in the depths of the distant forests, even if such international compacts were intended to include them. As for the Government's treaties or agreements of any kind with the Indian tribes, they, of course, amounted to nothing in the opinion of the frontiersmen. Who were the Indians, anyway, except a kind of wild animal very much in the frontiersman's way and to be exterminated like other savage beasts? Were not the Indians the natural foes of these white Lords of the earth?[731]
Indeed, it is more than likely that most of this advance guard of the westward-marching American people never had heard of such treaties until the Government's puny attempt to enforce them. At any rate, the settlers fell afoul of all who stood in their way; and, in the falling, spared not their hand. Madison declared that there was "danger of our being speedily embroiled with the nations contiguous to the U. States, particularly the Spaniards, by the licentious & predatory spirit of some of our Western people. In several instances, gross outrages are said to have been already practiced."[732] Jay, then Secretary of State, mournfully wrote to Jefferson in Paris, that "Indians have been murdered by our people in cold blood, and no satisfaction given; nor are they pleased with the avidity with which we seek to acquire their lands."
Expressing the common opinion of the wisest and best men of the country, who, with Madison, were horrified by the ruthless and unprovoked violence of the frontiersmen, Jay feared that "to pitch our tents through the wilderness in a great variety of places, far distant from each other," might "fill the wilderness with white savages ... more formidable to us than the tawny ones which now inhabit it." No wonder those who were striving to found a civilized nation had "reason ... to apprehend an Indian war."[733]
To correct this state of things and to bring home to these sons of individualism the law of nations and our treaties with other countries, Madison, in the autumn of 1784, brought in a bill which provided that Virginia should deliver up to foreign Governments such offenders as had come within the borders of the Commonwealth. The bill also provided for the trial and punishment by Virginia courts of any Virginia citizen who should commit certain crimes in "the territory of any Christian nation or Indian tribe in amity with the United States." The law is of general historic importance because it was among the first, if not indeed the very first, ever passed by any legislative body against filibustering.[734]
The feebleness of the National idea at this time; the grotesque notions of individual "rights"; the weakness or absence of the sense of civic duty; the general feeling that everybody should do as he pleased; the scorn for the principle that other nations and especially Indian tribes had any rights which the rough-and-ready settlers were bound to respect, are shown in the hot fight made against Madison's wise and moderate bill. Viewed as a matter of the welfare and safety of the frontiersmen themselves, Madison's measure was prudent and desirable; for, if either the Indians or the Spaniards had been goaded into striking back by formal war, the blows would have fallen first and heaviest on these very settlers.
Yet the bill was stoutly resisted. It was said that the measure, instead of carrying out international law, violated it because "such surrenders were unknown to the law of nations."[735] And what became of Virginia's sacred Bill of Rights, if such a law as Madison proposed should be placed on the statute books, exclaimed the friends of the predatory backwoodsmen? Did not the Bill of Rights guarantee to every person "speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage," where he must "be confronted with the accusers and witnesses," said they?
But what did this Nationalist extradition bill do? It actually provided that men on Virginia soil should be delivered up for punishment to a foreign nation which knew not the divine right of trial by jury. As for trying men in Virginia courts and before Virginia juries for something they had done in the fastnesses of the far-away forests of the West and South, as Madison's bill required, how could the accused "call for evidence in his favor"? And was not this "sacred right" one of the foundation stones, quarried from Magna Charta, on which Virginia's "liberties" had been built?[736] To be sure it was! Yet here was James Madison trying to blast it to fragments with his Nationalism!
So ran the arguments of those early American advocates of laissez-faire. Madison answered, as to the law of nations, by quoting Vattel, Grotius, and Puffendorf. As to the Bill of Rights, he pointed out that the individualist idealism by which the champions of the settlers interpreted this instrument "would amount to a license for every aggression, and would sacrifice the peace of the whole community to the impunity of the worst members of it."[737] Such were the conservative opinions of James Madison three years before he helped to frame the National Constitution.
Madison saw, too,—shocking treason to "liberty,"—"the necessity of a qualified interpretation of the bill of rights,"[738] if we were to maintain the slightest pretense of a National Government of any kind. The debate lasted several days.[739] With all the weight of argument, justice, and even common prudence on the side of the measure, it certainly would have failed had not Patrick Henry come to the rescue of it with all the strength of his influence and oratory.[740]
The bill was so mangled in committee that it was made useless and it was restored only by amendment. Yet such was the opposition to it that even with Henry's powerful aid this was done only by the dangerous margin of four votes out of a total of seventy-eight.[741] The enemies of the bill mustered their strength overnight and, when the final vote came upon its passage the next morning, came so near defeating it that it passed by a majority of only one vote out of a total of eighty-seven.[742]