THERE is a French sarcasm addressed to the manufacturers of books, which professes to sum up their whole art in this short recipe-" To make a book, take two books." Mr. Gibbs apparently has never heard this advice, or he despises it, for he practises the reverse principle to such an extent that we might advise him to take his one book and make three. Three very good books, interesting to three several classes of readers, he might have made out of these materials and his own elaborations; and we seriously regret that he had not done it, rather than incur the disadvantage of unwieldiness, by binding up together what only a very limited class of readers will prefer in such a form. The large mass of material, left by Oliver Wolcott, for a history of our early national finances, their difficulties, their slow advancement, their intimate connection with our general prosperity, to which they serve as an arithmetical index-the early disputes on many questions which are still disputed between political parties-the early origin of arguments and answers still deemed as good as new in political warfare; all these things would have made one volume, which would have come from under Mr. Gibb's hands in an attractive shape, and would have deserved and obtained an extensive circulation. Another book, entirely distinct, should have contained the modest biographical notices of Wolcott, which we find in these volumes, with his correspondence, as it is here, or more or less at length, at the editor's discretion.

This would have found readers in New-England, and a few here and there throughout the Union, wherever, in the views of New-Englander's descendants, there runs the blood of Wolcott's home correspondents, or their friends. We ourselves are of this number, and our recollections of the small years of this century are full of the forms and faces, whose names are

recorded here. There are recollections of Connecticut, which furnishes by much the greatest mass of these letters; but we remember Wolcott himself well, and with him Trumbull, the author of McFingal, Humphries, Hillhouse, Chauncey Goodrich, Dr. Strong, Judge Reese, and others, then still on the stage; while the names of Uriah Tracey, Jeremiah Wadsworth, Joel Barlow, and many more occurring here, who had then already passed away, were yet mixed up in every fireside conversation. To us, therefore, this whole mass of letters has its interest; but for the public, there is too much of it; there are quantities of pages which shed little light on history, and shed that light through far too many words for the general reader, who cares not for the writers.

The third and most important book that Mr. Gibbs ought to have made, would have borne nearly the title he has given this, only he should have appeared as author, not simply editor. He has shown that he can make a memoir of the two federal administrations, and has indeed done it; but necessarily, in accordance with his other designs, he had done it disconnectedly. It should have been a small book, coming, by size and price, within the time and means of that large portion of our people who only know the early history of federalism from the ten thousandth echoes of partisan clamor; a clamor exaggerated on both sides, attacking or extolling in extremes, through which no truth can be discovered. Not that we deem Mr. Gibb's to be that impartial hand that would bring out the clear truth without regard to party; on the contrary, he writes professedly as the advocate of federalism, and shows the strong feeling of an advocate in every page. But he is a fair one-he makes true statements, though he wishes for their support for false principles; and one can see that he is sincere in his be

lief of his principles, even when his facts contradict them. To give a single instance of what we mean, we find him quoting, on p. 97, vol. 1, with strong approbation, the following piece of owlish wisdom from Montesquieu :

Then the people, incapable of bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage every thing themselves to debate for the senate-to execute for the magistrate-to decide for the judges. Where this is the case, virtue will no longer exist in the republic."

Yet, if we turn to p. 318, in the same volume, we find him recording'the interference of the people in the matter of the British treaty, with apparently

equal satisfaction. "Reason triumphed" at that important juncture, by means of an appeal to the people :

"The misconceptions relative to the treaty being explained, and many of the arguments against it being removed on a full and public discussion, it became evident that a majority of the people were in favor of its ratification. This did not fail to produce its effect on their representatives, and the resolution passed," &c., &c.

In these two extracts may be clearly seen the great error of ancient federalism and of modern wbiggery. It is impossible to give up the old inherited dogma, that the people can do nothing without guidance and control; it is impossible to give up to merited oblivion such oracular laws, long cherished for inspiration, as the above trash, from Montesquieu. Yet the very gentlemen who believe all this, when they see the people actually interfere in matters of government, see also that they do not do it unnecessarily, and that they do do it honestly and rightly. Mr. Gibbs declaims, in his introduction, against the identifying the doctrines of "modern democracy" with the "principles of the fathers of English or American liberty;" and speaks of the reality and success of our own progression, "as if he doubted it deeply." And in his peroration, after showing in forcible terms, how many reasons there were in the federal times for strengthening the arm of government in the exercise of its limited powers, he denounces the accession of Jefferson as an era when morals were corrupted, "to the over

throw of liberty;" and when "American Jacobinism" brought in "in great part the evils of our political condition." The ideas of the introduction we are not disposed to combat at much length, though we cannot adopt them. We think the war of 1775, as Mr. Gibbs is careful to call it, was a war for the rights of man. Mr. Gibbs thinks it was a war in vindication of paper charters a war in defence of the chartered

rights-not of men, but of subjects. We defended our property against royal encroachments-not because we had a natural right so to do, but because we had rights as against the king, by the king's own charter and promise. It is strange a man should reason so in this age, but such and so deep is prejudice; and to this reasoning, at this day, many an honest whig will lend a pleased and partial ear. That the federal government, in its first twelve years, did need all its strength. is most certain; but that liberty perished under Jefferson, and that there are great evils in our present political condition, brought in by Jacobinism, are propositions which even these volumes, large as they are, have failed to bring home to our belief.

We have said that a clear and concise history of those twelve years would interest many readers; and few indeed are they who know now what our country then passed through. Weak, exhausted, and disunited, the sparse population of the thirteen states scarcely numbered one-fifth our present census, and certainly did not possess more than a twentieth of our present wealth. War threatened us on every side, and not only threatened, but more or less of the evils of war were, on every side, inflicted on us. Spain encroached on our jurisdiction on the side of the Mississippi, and annoyed our navigation of that river, and tampered with the Indians along the Florida line. The Indians of the western and northern frontiers were in the field in force, and actually defeated two of our generals in two successive campaigns. Wayne brought them to reason; but the peace with Great Britain was yet in an unsettled state, and Great Britain might always excite a savage war upon our backs, while both her cruisers, and those of France, were capturing our vessels upon the ocean. The Alge

rines also continued their piracies in this honorable company, and here also the interference of Great Britain was suspected, since the most serious losses happened to us in consequence, and as an effect of the withdrawal of her fleets from certain parts of the Mediterranean. Add to this the whiskey war in Pennsylvania, and the danger of a slave insurrection at the south, and the picture is dark enough to show that there is much error in the prevailing idea, that the war of independence led us to the immediate enjoyment of the blessings of liberty and peace. The slave danger, then, with a foreign and not friendly power on the south and southwest of us, and the example of St. Domingo still fresh, was much more real than it ever can be again, and was greatly aggravated by the fear that the French might come in from the West Indies with a force partly of blacks, and arm the slaves under the banner of Amis des Noirs. We discuss all this very coolly now; but in those times every man slept restlessly, and dreamed of the danger that was nearest to him. And the divisions of political parties took their rise, as they still take their colors, from men's material interests. The great lines between democrat and federalist, were drawn almost territorially between north and south, and divided the men who feared France most as an invader at the south, from those who hated her most as an enemy and a spoiler, at the north. The policy of the former was to conciliate, that of the latter to resist. It was the interest of the north and east to oppose, with arms, the attacks already begun upon our commerce, and the captures of our vessels. Great Britain had done her part, but not a large part; and she had shown some glimmerings of relenting, and given some hopes, which were afterwards justified, of something like redress. It was not to be thought of, that we should undertake a war against both Britain and France, though both had given us cause for war, had we been equal to it. But in the outcry which arose on all sides against the injustice we were on all sides suffering, the opinions and passions of men divided under the influence of many strong influences of those days, whose power is now but imperfectly remembered or comprehended.

"There was, throughout the country, (says Mr. Gibbs,) a general deep-seated national hatred of Great Britain burning every where, with an intense, if not couspicuous flame; for among the native popthe war had not desolated-there was ulation, there was hardly a fireside that scarcely one of man's estate who had not shared in its hardships as well as its glories. The sight of a blackened roof treethe tale of the prison ship-the sugar house, or county jail, had their recollections, as well as the musket which hung over every chimney. And if the memory later outrages," &c., &c. of these ever had slumbered, there were

In these later outrages, as we have said, the share of France was far the greatest, and it was beyond any thing which Americans now can imagine their country would ever have borne without resistance. Our merchant ships were taken by hundreds; three hundred and eighty were officially reported to Congress, from October, 1796, to June, 1797. Our ministers, who were sent to ask humbly for a treaty, and if pos sible to obtain some redress, were ignominiously expelled from France, and the ministers of France had set our laws at defiance-insulted our government, and interfered openly in our elections. Yet a party was found among us to sustain all this, and to clog with all its weight the arm of government, which was ready to be raised in resistance. Yes, there was such a party, and its leader was Thomas Jefferson: let us not disguise or deny the truth, however deeply we may deplore it. Born a Virginian, educated among people indifferent or hostile to commerce and commercial men, he felt by so much the less sensibly the loss of our merchantmen, by so much the more, the fear of that standing bugbear of the south, a servile war. Between these two he judged, and perhaps rightly, that the latter was the greater evil; and between two enemies he wished to choose that one who had least power to inflict it on us.

For the question, during a long space of time, appeared to be, not between peace and war, with one or both enemies, but simply between war with this one, or with that one, with the other in either case for an ally. We had now, in fact, two enemies; we might hope to get rid of the hostilities

of one by an alliance; and that was all, in our then helpless condition, that the minds of most men could venture to hope. In choosing France for an ally, Mr. Jefferson and his friends could plead many high grounds of preference, and appeal to many high principles and strong feelings, in the hearts of men. Gratitude for aid in our struggle with England, and sympathy with a republic which had just cast off the trammels of monarchy; however absurdly or unjustly Mr. Gibbs may think they were urged in favor of France, were yet urged forcibly, eloquently, and often, indeed, sincerely, to willing and favoring auditors. All the contrary points told strongly against Great Britain, and between the bitter passions which bade us recoil from her, and the somewhat romantic inclinations which led us towards her rival, the choice may be explained, and to many minds excused, which many minds at that time made. Frauce injured us deeply, insulted us, robbed us, threatened us with ruin and death; but we must forgive either her or England; we must put up with all this from one of the two; for we could not take revenge on both.

Such, we believe, is the best excuse that can be given for the French party, as it then existed in our country. But Mr. Jefferson was wrong on some other material points of national policy, and especially on the creation of a navy. He, and his adherents at that day, steadily opposed the navy; they looked on this also as a thing to be kept up for the interests of commerce, and at the expense of the whole country, to the increase of that taxation which was already severely felt. The method of making the revenue raised by the General Government a positive blessing and protection and gain to those who paid it, was not then discovered; and appropriations were less liberal, and more fiercely discussed. Mr. Jefferson and his party opposed the navy, therefore, and they were wrong; they advocated tribute to the Barbary powers instead of war against them; and there, also, they were wrong. They were wrong too in their advocacy of France, as we have said, if not in the main principle, at least in the details, and the excess; wrong, certainly, in justifying, one by one, as they occurred, the insulting

measures of that power, if not, in their belief, that she was our preferable ally. Yet on this very ground, where the democratic party of that day was most wrong, the federalists most right, was the fall of federalism prepared. After Washington's retirement, John Adams was brought forward as his successor; a candidate taken up, as the whigs take men up now, because he was available, or, as the word then was, inevitable. To a party which believed in old customs and rights of government and succession, it seemed so natural and necessary, that the vice president should succeed to the presidency, that fit or unfit, they could not help promoting him. He was a man "of a restless and irritable temperament, jealous of other's praise, and suspicious of their influence; obstinate, and yet fickle; actuated by an ambition which could bear neither opposition nor lukewarmness, and vain, to a degree approaching insanity; he was of himself incapable, alike of conceiving or acting upon a settled system of policy, and was to others as easy a subject for indirect management, as he was impracticable to a more legitimate approach."-[vol. i., p. 456.

This was the man to whom that high-minded party, for such the federalists of Washington's time undoubtedly were, committed the destinies of their country, and bitterly and most deservedly were they made to repent it. He acted for awhile on their right views, showed a bold front to France, and rallied the country to defend its rights, and, by a natural effect of a right course at such a crisis, a majority in the country rallied to his party. Then suddenly, in the moment when his measures seemed triumphant, he changed them; sent out a fresh embassy to Paris to seek a treaty, and obtained it from Napoleon, whose unexpectedly sudden accession to the supreme power, brought new views with it to the councils of France. It was an humiliating treaty, abandoning virtually all claim to the $15,000,000 of which we had been robbed, and affording us no security nor guaranties against further robberies in future. Still it was peace and not war; and the advocates of peace joined with the partisans of France to accept it; but not to thank