pline they need, are the great questions. The navy, by perfect discipline, never failed. The army, without discipline, never triumphed. Voluntary government, voluntary religion, voluntary hostilities are American experiments, which, according to Jefferson's argument of relative good, have thus far withstood foreign aggression, maintained domestic peace, escaped civil war, and advanced the arts of civilization. By happy mixture of constraint with independence, law and liberty, the United States stand now among the primary powers of the world: to which elevation the war of 1812, with its preliminary reverses and postliminious successes, largely contributed. It may long remain matter of controversy and disputed political science, whether republican government is as strong as others. That war established beyond dispute its capacity for war under difficult and trying circumstances; which seem to have been ordained to prove and vindicate by early misfortune the unconquerable spirit, aptitude, versatility, and resource of a free people. CONGRESS. CHAPTER III. SPECIAL SESSION OF 1813.-TAX BILLS.-JOHN W. EPPES. -JAMES PLEASANTS.-JONATHAN ROBERTS.-TIMOTHY PITKIN.WILLIAM W. BIBB.-HUGH NELSON.-PREPARATION FOR WAR.—PENSIONS.-PRIVATEERS.-SECRET SESSION.-MR. GALLATIN'S NOMINA TION. THE session of Congress began the 24th of May, 1813. On the 10th of June, the chairman of the committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Eppes, with permission of the House, reported relative to a well-digested system of public revenue, and, on motion and leave presented the tax bills; viz., for the assessment and collection of a direct tax on lands and slaves, a salt tax, on licenses to retailers, carriage tax, still tax, on auctions, on refined sugar, on stamps, ou foreign tonnage, further provision for the collections, and a bill to establish the office of commissioner of the revenue. All these bills, were, as usual, read the first and second time, by their titles, that day, and committed to a committee of the whole House. On the 22d of June, the House took them up in committee, Hugh Nelson of Virginia, in the chair, and they were successively passed through the regular stages of enactment. In about a mouth, by the latter end of July, this considerable body of acts received President Madison's signature, and were put in opera tion. John W. Eppes, chairman of the committee which performed this important function, was the son-in-law of Jefferson, the benefit of whose confidential correspondence he enjoyed. Mr. Eppes was a gentleman of respectable abilities, sincere and manly in his sentiments, which were sometimes, however, rather too refined for practical application to the emergencies of war. During most of this session he was confined by a fit of the gout, which devolved on Dr. Bibb, of Georgia, the lead in the committee of Ways and Means.. Without meaning any disparagement of Mr. Eppes, it was, perhaps, fortunate for the tax bills that their passage through the House devolved on a member who made no speeches, as the chairman was no doubt prepared to do, which would have elicited answers and thus consumed time precious for action. William W. Bibb, afterwards, I think, Governor of Alabama, was a young man, slight of person, feeble in health, taciturn, conciliatory, firm, decided in support of the war and Madison's administration, who confined what he said on the floor to short explanations in answer to objections or questions, without indulging in any rhetoric. The tax bills, if flooded with debate, if not foundered, might have been much hindered: the previous question being then a rare application. Dr. Bibb was ably supported in the committee of Ways and Means by James Pleasants of Virginia, (of which state I believe Dr. Bibb was also a native,) one of the most respectable members of that Congress; likewise without ever making a speech. He was a kinsman of Jefferson and resembled him in the sandy complexion said to indicate an enterprising temper. Mr. Pleasants was afterwards Governor of Virginia, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, as members of public assemblies, filled the highest places without the talent of public speaking, so common as to be almost cheap in the United States, by no means universal in England, and extremely rare in France, where nearly everybody can talk but few speak, which seems to be a difference between using the tongue standing or sitting. Another member of the committee of Ways and Means and a frequent speaker, was Mr. Jonathan Roberts, of Pennsylvania, yet living on or near the farm which his family acquired when some of them came from England with Penn; and which Mr. Roberts tills with his own hands, while fond of literature and well read in polite learning. Mr. Speaker Clay, thorough-going in his party politics, took care to construct his committees with large administration majorities of all such as might have any influence upon the war. The most active member of the minority opposed to war and the administration on this committee, was Mr. Timothy Pitkin, of Connecticut, a gentleman well known for his statistical and historical attainments and works. He too was a frequent and able speaker, decided in his opposition, but temperate and fair. Hugh Nelson, who presided as chairman during the consideration of the tax bills, was remarkably conversant with the rules and usages of a deliberative assembly, son of Thomas Nelson who signed the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards by President Monroe's appointment, American minister in Spain. The war of 1812 was beholden to James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay, James Pleasants, John W. Eppes, William W. Bibb, and Hugh Nelson, all, if I am not mistaken, natives of Virginia, not to mention others, for eminent services in elevated stations. Mr. Nelson represented the district where three successive presidents were born; of the red earth, John Randolph said, fruitful of chief magistrates. The ancient dominion, as that state is called, has been a mother of several others, fruitful of political axioms and principles, and was powerfully represented in all branches of government during the war. The thirteenth Congress convened by the president in special session to impose taxes, represented a sparse people, only twentyfive on an average to the square mile, scattered over disjointed territories two thousand miles square; only eight millions altogether, white, red, and black; for thirty years plunged in the pursuit of gain, unused to restraint, unbroken to taxation, which they had never felt but to resist from the first day of the Revolution in 1775. Tried with all the power of Washington's administration, it was resisted by rebellion. Continued under that of Adams, further rebellion ensued; and taxes were the means by which that administration was overthrown. Always no better than a necessary evil, taxes in England required war for their imposition. The war of the American Revolution was waged almost without them, like that of France, by paper money. Throughout the war of 1812, among all the difficulties this was not one. Whether the twelfth Congress could have laid taxes without overthrowing Madison's administration may be a question. But the thirteenth Congress did so without hesitation or hindrance, doubled them as occasion required, and they were always punctually paid in even the most disaffected parts of the United States. Yet it is not to be wondered at that wise men feared the experiment. The short-lived representatives of a self-governed people are apt to be a people-fearing House of Representatives. Mr. Gallatin might well infer from all the taxation experience of the world, especially that of the American Revolution, and the administrations of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, that Congress must be timid, selfish, parsimonious, and unstable: less disposed as they generally are than their constituents for measures of decision. The federal constitution, however, is in this respect, much stronger and better government than the confederation. By that, members of Congress eligible for but one year, and ineligible but for three years out of six, revocable at all times by vote of their state legislature, had no authority to act directly upon the community for revenue, but were obliged to approach the people through the mostly impenetrable hindrance of state legislation. Early impressions of popular and state power, of representative dependence and timidity, were therefore natural in 1812. Many years afterwards Mr. Madison said that, without reference to party opposition, there was an inscrutable disaffection, an under toe in Congress he called it, somewhere, which baffled his administration at first. Members of Congress of the war party more than whispered that it was in his cabinet. But many well inclined to republican government at that time deemed a confederated republic incapable of such vigorous and constant action as war required. Notwithstanding the awkwardness and discomfiture of the commencement of belligerent operations, there was no hesitation in Congress, in 1813, to enact a system of taxation, or in the people to comply with it. On the contrary, seldom has a session of legislation in any country, where the right of free discussion prevails, been conducted with more order, system, vigour, or advantage than the first session of the Thirteenth Congress, which was adjourned the 2d day of August, 1813, after having in seventy days accomplished all the objects of the assembly. Law making in Congress by legislators from the distant parts of an extended country, divided into eighteen sovereign states, with various conflicting local interests, and jarring party politics, sometimes therefore called ambassadors, must be difficult, should be deliberate, but is more apt to be precipitate than tardy, as is the common reproach. The majority of the House in that Congress, were unanimous, and harmonious. There was some dissidence in the Senate; but hardly any, if any at all, in the House, certainly no dissension, among the supporters of the war, whose pressure suppressed whatever inherent tendency to discord there might and must be in such bodies. The opposition was equally united, zealous, and active. But to oppose war duly declared, is disadvantage. Its daily events and tidings, whether victories or defeats, in which the blood shed flows from a common country, are hardly reducible to mere topics of party censure, but mostly must be matters of general exultation or universal condolence. Opposition |