After more than a month of debate, Macon’s bill passed the House by 73 to 52, and went up to the Senate, where it was consigned to the tender mercies of General Smith and Mr. Giles. On the motion of General Smith, February 21, 1810, all the clauses except the 1st, 2d, and 12th were struck out by a vote of 16 to 11. The Senate debates are not reported, but General Smith subsequently made a speech on the bill, which he printed, and in which he took the ground that the measure was feeble, and that it was so strong as to justify England in confiscating all our trade. This was the ground also taken by the Aurora. General Smith proposed to arm our merchant vessels and furnish them convoy, a measure over and over again rejected. By a vote of 17 to 15 the Senate ultimately adhered to its amendments and killed the bill, Gallatin’s personal enemies deciding the result.
Throughout all this transaction the Secretary of State had acted a curious part. Silent or assenting in the Cabinet, where, notwithstanding rumors to the contrary, there was always apparent cordiality, Mr. Smith’s conversation out-of-doors, and especially with opponents of the Administration, was very free in condemnation of the whole policy which he officially represented.[100] No one, indeed, either in or out of the Cabinet, pretended an enthusiastic admiration of Macon’s bill; Mr. Madison, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Macon himself, only regarded it as “better than nothing,” and “nothing” was the alternative. Congress had put the country into a position equally humiliating, ridiculous, and unprofitable; it had for two sessions refused to follow the Administration and had refused to impose any policy of its own. The influence of General Smith, solitary and unsupported except by Leib and the Aurora faction, now barred the path of legislation and held Congress down to its contemptible and crouching attitude of impotent gesticulation and rant. The Secretary of State was a party to his brother’s acts, and although too dull a man to have any distinct scheme of his own or any depth of intrigue; although obliged to let the President write his official papers and Mr. Gallatin control both his foreign and his domestic policy, he nevertheless used the liberty thus obtained to talk with unreserved freedom both to Federalists and discontented Republicans about the characters of his associates and the contents of his despatches.
Thus the policy of a Navigation Act was defeated, and another year was lost. Only at the very close of the session, when it became apparent that something must be done, Mr. Macon got his bill No. 2 before the House. This was on April 7, and on the 10th he wrote to Nicholson: “I am at a loss to guess what we shall do on the subject of foreign relations. The bill in the enclosed paper, called Macon’s No. 2, is not really Macon’s, though he reports it as chairman. It is in truth Taylor’s. This I only mention to you because when it comes to be debated I shall not act the part of a father but of a step-father.” After a violent struggle between the two Houses, a bill was at length passed, on May 1, 1810, which has strong claims to be considered the most disgraceful act on the American statute-book. It surrendered all resistance to the British and French orders and edicts; it repealed the non-importation law; it left our shipping unprotected to the operation of foreign municipal laws; it offered not even a protest against violence and robbery such as few powerful nations had ever endured except at the edge of the sword; and its only proposition towards these two foreign nations, each of which had exhausted upon us every form of insult and robbery, was an offer that if either would repeal its edicts, the United States would prohibit trade with the other.
The imagination can scarcely conceive of any act more undignified, more cowardly, or, as it proved, more mischievous; but in the utter paralysis into which these party quarrels had now brought Congress, this was all the legislation that could be got, although, in justice to Congress, it is but fair to add that even this was universally contemned. The Administration had nothing to do but to execute it, and to make what it could of the policy it established.
In the contest upon Macon’s bill, Mr. Gallatin had the President’s full support and co-operation. But in another and to him a much more serious struggle he stood quite alone, and all he could obtain from the President was that the Executive influence should not be thrown against him. The charter of the United States Bank was about to expire. In the present condition of the country, with war always in prospect and public and private finances seriously disordered, the bank was an institution almost if not quite indispensable to the Treasury. To abolish it was to create artificially and unnecessarily a very serious financial embarrassment at the moment when the national existence might turn on financial steadiness. To create a new system that would answer the same purposes would be the work of years, and would require the most careful experiments. The subject had been referred to Mr. Gallatin by the Senate, and he had at the close of the last session sent in a report representing in strong language the advantages derived from the bank. He now drew up a bill by which the existing charter was to be considerably modified; the capital raised to thirty millions, three-fifths of which was to be lent to the government; branch banks to be established in each State, and half the directors appointed by the State; with various other provisions intended to secure the utmost possible advantage to the government. Parties at once divided on this question as on the foreign intercourse question, but with a change of sides. The Federalists favored, the old Republicans resisted, the bank, and General Smith resisted Mr. Gallatin. During this session, however, little more was done than to introduce the bills; the matter was then thrown aside until next year.
These subjects, and a hasty report on domestic manufactures, occupied the session almost exclusively, so far as Mr. Gallatin was concerned. When Congress rose, on the 1st May, 1810, every one was obliged to concede that a more futile session had never been held, and the Aurora fulminated against Mr. Gallatin as the cause of all its shortcomings. More and more the different elements of personal discontent made common cause against the Secretary of the Treasury, and before the end of the year 1810 the Aurora and its allies opened a determined assault upon him with the avowed intention of driving him from office.
It was in reference to these attacks, which incessantly recurred to the old stories of 1806, that Mr. Jefferson wrote to Mr. Gallatin as follows:
JEFFERSON TO GALLATIN.
16 August, 1810.
I have seen with infinite grief the set which is made at you in the public papers, and with the more as my name has been so much used in it. I hope we both know one another too well to receive impression from circumstances of this kind. A twelve years’ intimate and friendly intercourse must be better evidence to each of the dispositions of the other than the letters of foreign ministers to their courts, or tortured inferences from facts true or false. I have too thorough a conviction of your cordial good-will towards me, and too strong a sense of the faithful and able assistance I received from you, to relinquish them on any evidence but of my own senses. With entire confidence in your assurance of these truths I shall add those only of my constant affection and high respect.