The Pennsylvania members allowed themselves to be drawn into this step; but they had hardly given their votes before waking to their mistake. The next day a committee was moved to reconsider the subject; and in spite of Randolph’s remonstrances, the motion was carried by sixty to forty, every Pennsylvanian changing his vote. Randolph, exasperated to the last degree, attempted to block the measure by obstinacy. When the new Bill was taken up in committee of the whole House February 28, he consumed the day in dilatory motions, calling the yeas and nays until he could no longer induce one fifth of the members to support him in asking for them. The House sat until half-past one in the morning; and when at last the Bill came to a vote, Randolph and his friends left the House without a quorum.[263] After several counts, a quorum was reported, and the Bill was passed; but the yeas and nays were not taken, and many suspicions were expressed that a quorum was not actually present. Nevertheless the Pennsylvanians won their victory; the Bill became law at the last moment of the session. Randolph’s conduct ended in destroying his own influence; and the Pennsylvanians felt that the time had come when an alliance with the Democrats of New England against the oligarchy of Virginia could no longer be postponed.
This was the situation at Washington when, on the last day of the Ninth Congress, a messenger arrived from England bringing from Monroe and Pinkney a treaty of commerce. The President’s attempt to unite his party on a liberal domestic policy had not succeeded; and many years were to pass before Congress should see another session devoted to domestic affairs.
CHAPTER XVI.
While the summer of 1806 was passing in America, carrying Burr and his insane projects to failure, General Armstrong in Paris was watching the progress of another adventurer, whose plans were as dark as those of Burr, but whose genius was of a very different order. Talleyrand’s mysterious instructions regarding Florida were given to Armstrong early in September, 1805. Ulm capitulated October 17; the battle of Trafalgar was fought October 21. Napoleon was thenceforward master of the Continent, and England of the ocean. December 2 Napoleon won the decisive battle of Austerlitz, and December 26 he signed the treaty of Pressburg which humbled Austria.
The wit of man often lagged behind the active movement of the world; but never had diplomatists a harder task than to keep abreast of Napoleon. Other men had moments of repose; but Napoleon’s mind seemed never to rest. His schemes were developed, and swept over Europe like so many storm-centres. His plans sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed, but the success or the failure equally implied a greater effort behind; and while Armstrong and his brother diplomatists speculated about the Emperor’s motives in pursuing one object, the Emperor was already devising and using new machinery for gaining another. At the close of the war with Austria, Armstrong needed to learn whether Napoleon still wanted money, whether Talleyrand favored the sale of Florida, whether the treaty of Pressburg had or had not left American affairs where they were; and none of these questions could be answered except by Napoleon himself, who was already far advanced in schemes which no one could fathom, and which largely depended for their success on the skill with which he could conceal them from Jefferson.
Armstrong could only wait. Through the winter of 1805–1806, while John Randolph’s opposition delayed Madison’s instructions to the minister at Paris, Armstrong had nothing to do. The Emperor and Talleyrand returned to Paris at midnight Jan. 26, 1806. More powerful than ever and more absolute, Napoleon came back from Vienna rich with the contributions he had levied in Germany, but angry at the condition into which Marbois had brought the Treasury of France. Within twelve hours after arriving at the Tuileries he called a council of his ministers, disgraced Marbois, and appointed Mollien in his place.
That this revolution in the Cabinet had some bearing upon American interests was more than likely; for not only was Marbois an honest man and a warm friend of the United States, but the weight that dragged him down was nothing less than the weight of Spanish finances. The story may be shortly told.[264] Napoleon’s wars and repudiation of every inconvenient debt threw the French mercantile class into general bankruptcy. In the want of coin to supply the demands of the Emperor and of the merchants, the Bank of France issued dangerous amounts of paper money. To support these issues specie had to be obtained; and the empire which produced specie was Spain. Spain might be forced to give up her treasures; her arrears of subsidy alone would if paid add greatly to Marbois’s resources. Yet the treasures of Spain were shut in Mexico and Peru; they could be brought to Europe only under danger of capture; and a means by which ten or twenty million Mexican dollars could run the gauntlet of British cruisers and reach in safety the Bank of France was a matter of necessity to Marbois.
The ordinary business of the Treasury in discounts and contracts was conducted through a firm called the “Négociants réunis,” consisting of three capitalists,—Messrs. Ouvrard, Desprez, and Yanlerberghe. Ouvrard, the most active of the three, went to Madrid; and by lending assistance to the sorely pressed Treasury and trade of Spain induced the Spanish government to give him the privilege of importing bullion from Mexico at the rate of seventy-five cents on the dollar. The risk of importation was worth twenty-five per cent on any cargo; but Ouvrard meant to escape all risk. He had plans of his own, involving partnership with the British government itself through the Hopes and Barings of Amsterdam and London; he proposed to draw some five million dollars from Mexico by giving to the United States government drafts on South America in settlement of the Spanish spoliations, besides getting no less than ten million dollars from the United States government for the Floridas.
The unnamed negotiator who came to Armstrong in September, 1805, with Talleyrand’s autograph instructions was an agent of Marbois and Ouvrard, whose errand was doubtless known to the Emperor. Meanwhile the Treasury, the Bank, and the “Négociants réunis” supported each other by loans, discounts, and indorsements, largely resting on Spanish bonds, and made face as well as they could against commercial embarrassments and Napoleon’s arbitrary calls for great sums of coin; but the Treasury, being in truth the only solvent member of the partnership, must ultimately be responsible for the entire loss whenever matters should come to liquidation.
This was the state of the finances when, Jan. 27, 1806, Napoleon called Marbois and Ouvrard before him. No one charged criminality on any of the parties to the affair. In truth one person alone was to blame, and that person was the Emperor himself; but men who served such masters were always in the wrong,—and in fact Marbois, Ouvrard, Desprez, and Vanlerberghe accepted their fate. Marbois was disgraced; while the three others were obliged to surrender all their property under the alternative of going to Vincennes, with its memories of the Duc d’Enghien.