anxious and almost violent to seize for the country? What is there in the treaty that could humble us so low? Are they the men to swallow their resentments, who so lately were choking with them? If, in the case contemplated by them, it should be peace, I do not hesitate to declare it ought not to be peace.

Is there any thing in the prospect of the interior state of the country to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How is this disorder in the machine to be rectified? While it exists, its movements must stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary interposition of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the constitution and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty are invulnerable and immortal-as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissensions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have no doubt better nerves and better discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and happy consequences of all this array of horrors. They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union or resources, in "the calm lights of mild philosophy.'

But whatever they may anticipate as the next measure of prudence and safety, they have explained nothing to the house. After rejecting the treaty, what is to be the next step? They must have foreseen what ought to be done; they have doubtless resolved what to propose. Why, then, are they silent? Dare they not avow their plan of conduct, or do they wait till our progress towards confusion shall guide them in forming it?

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which it is yet in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance, without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved it? Will he not feel some dread, that a change of system will reverse the scene? The

well-grounded fears of our citizens, in 1794, were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered, at that day, as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general desire of our people was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our dis putes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negotiation after the end of the European war. This was gaining every thing, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining every thing. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentred in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale; it will be a baleful meteor, portending tempest and war.

Let us not hesitate, then, to agree to the appropriation to carry it into faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast, and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proofs of their industry, as the instruments of their future success. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

I rose to speak under impressions that I would have resisted if I could. Those who see me will believe, that the reduced state of my health has unfitted me, almost equally, for much exertion of body or mind. Unprepared for debate, by careful reflection in my retirement, or by long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent was imposed by necessity, and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet when I come to the moment of deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I have

spent in expostulation, have their value, because they protract the crisis, and the short period in which alone we may resolve to escape it.

I have thus been led, by my feelings, to speak more at length than I had intended. Yet I have, perhaps, as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and constitution of my country.

11

SPEECH OF EDWARD LIVINGSTON,

ON

THE ALIEN BILL,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED

states, June 19, 1798.

By this bill, it was provided that the president might order dangerous or suspected aliens to depart out of the territory of the United States. The penalty, for disobedience of the president's order, was imprisonment and a perpetual exclusion from the rights of citizenship. If any alien, ordered to depart, should prove, to the satisfaction of the president, that no injury to the United States would arise from suffering him to remain, the president might grant him a license to remain for such time as he should deem proper, and at such place as he should designate.

The question was about to be taken on the final passage of the bill, when Mr. Livingston addressed the house as follows:

MR. SPEAKER,

I esteem it one of the most fortunate occurrences of my life, that, after an inevitable absence from my seat in this house, I have arrived in time to express my dissent to the passage of this bill. It would have been a source of eternal regret, and the keenest remorse, if any private affairs, any domestic concerns, however interesting, had deprived me of the opportunity I am now about to use of stating my objections, and recording my vote against an act which I believe to be in direct violation of the constitution, and marked with every characteristic of the most odious despotism.

On my arrival, I inquired what subject occupied the attention of the house; and being told it was the alien bill, I directed the printed copy to be brought to me; but, to my great surprise, seven or eight copies of different bills on the same subject were put into my hands: among them it was difficult (so strongly were they marked by the same family features) to discover the individual bill then under discussion. This circumstance gave me a suspicion, that the principles of the measure were erroneous. Truth marches directly to its end by a single, undeviating path. Error is either undermining in its object, or pursues it through a thousand winding ways: the multiplicity of propositions, therefore, to attain

the same general but doubtful end, led me to suspect, that neither the object nor the means, proposed to attain it, were proper or necessary. These surmises have been confirmed by a more minute examination of the bill. In the construction of statutes, it is a received rule to examine what was the state of things when they were passed, and what were the evils they were intended to remedy as these circumstances will be applied in the construction of the law, it may be well to examine them minutely in framing it. The state of things, if we are to judge from the complexion of the bill, must be that a number of aliens, enjoying the protection of our government, are plotting its destruction; that they are engaged in treasonable machinations against a people who have given them an asylum and support, and that there exists no provision for their expulsion and punishment. If these things are so, and no remedy exists for the evil, one ought speedily to be provided; but even then it must be a remedy that is consistent with the constitution under which we act; for, by that instrument, all powers, not expressly given to it by the union, are reserved to the states it follows, that, unless an express authority can be found, vesting us with the power, be the evil ever so great, it can only be remedied by the several states, who have never delegated the authority to congress.

We must legislate upon facts, not on surmises: we must have evidence, not vague suspicions, if we mean to legislate with prudence. What facts have been produced? What evidence has been submitted to the house? I have heard, sir, of none; but if evidence of facts could not be procured, at least it might have been expected, that reasonable cause of suspicion should be shown. Here, again, gentlemen are at fault; they cannot even show a suspicion why aliens ought to be suspected. We have, indeed, been told, that the fate of Venice, Switzerland, and Batavia, was produced by the interference of foreigners. But the instances are unfortunate; because all those powers have been overcome by foreign force, or divided by domestic faction, not by the influence of aliens who resided among them; and if any instruction is to be gained from the history of those republics, it is, that we ought to banish not aliens, but all those citizens who do not approve the executive acts. This doctrine, I believe, gentlemen are not ready to avow; but if this measure prevails, I shall not think the other remote. If it has been proved, that these governments were destroyed by the conspiracies of aliens, it yet remains to be shown, that we are in the same situation; or that any such plots have been detected, or are even reasonably suspected here. Nothing of this kind has yet been done. A modern Theseus, indeed, has told us, that he has procured a clew that will enable him to penetrate the labyrinth and destroy this monster of sedition. Who the