been an open opposition to the execution of the laws; and he seems to have had a natural sympathy for those who were guilty of it. Profaning the sacred exertions of our first revolutionary patriots by an assimilation with his own agency in this paltry squabble, his imagination took fire at a striking similarity he discovered between the judgment in the case of the batture, and the Massachusetts port bill, between the opening of my canal and the "occlusion" of the Boston harbour,-he pants for the wreaths of Hancock, Adams, and Otis,—and he bravely determines to hurl all the vengeance of the government at the unprotected head of an individual, who had nothing for his defence but the feeble barriers of constitution, treaty and laws.

Popularity was to be gained, and of that kind which he loves the most, the applause of those who were independent enough to resist the decree of a court, and set the authority of law at defiance.

In the pages which contain this part of the defence, we are presented with the circumstances which induced the president to take the measure of ordering me to be dispossessed by the marshal; and among them we find several documents which are dated at New Orleans, only thirteen days before the resolution of the privy council at Washington;—but this is a trifling obstacle to Mr. Jefferson. Let us suppose that he had before him not only all that passed at New Orleans up to the very day of the deliberation at Washington, but all the facts he cites as having taken place for years afterwards. Let him have the advantage of the whole, and see to what it amounts.

The first of these documents are letters from governor Claiborne, and the extracts that are given, furnish the true motives of his conduct. These letters inform him, that Mr. Livingston is disliked by the people, and that the decision of the court is very unpopular;-they seem too, to have given a true statement of some of the outrages that were committed in opposition to that decision. Here, then, was an opportunity not to be lost; an unpopular man to be oppressed,-a popular claim to be supported, and opposition to the laws to be rewarded. Gover nor Claiborne, it is true, had formed no conception of the inode in which this was to be done;-he hints in his letter at an old fashioned idea of "devising some means of arresting the judgment of the territorial court, and bringing the cause before another tribunal;"-but this suggestion did not coincide with the

ideas of the gentleman to whom it was made; he is peculiarly unfortunate, although his wish is always for an investigation before the tribunals of his country, his practice is always to decline their jurisdiction, and he was prevented from following this judicious advice of governor Claiborne, in the same manner that we have seen him "precluded" from bringing the merits before the court at Richmond,-by his own act.

But it seems the case was urgent,-my works threatened to drown the city,-its peace could only be preserved by destroying them; and the land in question was absolutely necessary for the use of the citizens. The president, therefore, was called on to interpose, and he could not wait for the slow forms of law. If these things were true, the public are yet to learn by what part of the constitution, the president is vested with the power to abate nuisances of his own authority, or whether the first magistrate of the union, is, ex officio, high constable of the city of New Orleans.-If any offence was committed against the police of the city, or of the river, and shores, Mr. Jefferson has shewn, that a remedy was provided by the territorial laws;-he has shewn, that the administration of justice was sufficiently vigilant, for he has recited a presentment against these very works. Why, then, did he not trust that the people of New Orleans would have good sense enough, not to suffer themselves to be drowned, when they had the means of prevention in their power. If the public functionaries, who cannot, I believe, be taxed with partiality to me, had thought that they could have supported the allegations in the presentment, that presentment would certainly have been prosecuted. More than two months elapsed between the time of finding it, and the execution of the president's order. That presentment could have been brought to trial without delay, and if the facts were proved, the works would have been destroyed as effectually by the judgment of law as by any executive mandate. In that case, however, the court must have made it a part of the judgment, that the nuisance should be abated-an inconvenience which was avoided by the president's order, which only drove me from the property. The nuisance was suffered to remain, and for several successive years served as a safe harbour to boats, and has saved thousands of dollars to the public,-while a house which was also part of the nuisance,has been usefully occupied as a

guard-house by the city. If, then, there were this danger of immediate inundation, from the effect of my works, there was no necessity for the interference of the president of the United States; the great officers of state need not have been called from their respective departments, to deliberate on the weighty concerns of the police of New Orleans,-and the cabinet council of a great nation might, it must be confessed, at that period, have found objects much more worthy their attention. But there was no such danger, and I prove it from data given by the very work that contains the assertion.-The banks of my canal extended from the road 276 feet on the batture. The sides were twenty feet wide, and from four to six feet high. Now, if I calculate right, this forms a mass of 55,200 cubic feet, which would be displaced even if the river rose to the full height of the bank by the sides of the canal;-add the parts of the levée laid down on Mr. Jefferson's plan 990 feet long, by 6 feet high and 6 feet wide, forming 35,640 cubic feet, and we have altogether 90,840 cubic feet;-and the displacing this mass, Mr. J. thought put the city in such immediate a danger of inun dation, that he states it as a reason for considering the case as one of extreme urgency. But we have seen that the works occupied a space of 90,840 cubic feet;-now, the river being 3600 feet wide, the length of the works 1066 feet, and the rise of the water 14 feet, we have for the increased column of water when at its highest opposite those works, 3600 x 1066 x 14 = 53,726,400 feet, which being divided by the mass of the work, to wit, 90,840, we have, leaving out fractions, 591; that is to say, that the works displace a quantity of water equal to part of the column opposite to them;-and of course, could only raise the water in that proportion, that is to say, two lines and parts of a line.

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This calculation is made on the idea, that the works were erected in the current of the river, but the reverse is the fact. From the point A, to the lower part of the town, (see plate No. 3), there is no current whatever but an eddy, and therefore no work but such as project further into the river than that point can at all change the current. But let us examine by what process of calculation Mr. Jefferson draws the conclusion, that these works would "raise the water three feet at least, and would sweep away the whole levée, the city it now protects, No. XVIII.

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and inundate all the lower country." (Jeff. p. 20.) In the first place, he encreases the projection of my embankment from two hundred and seventy six feet, as he states it in the preceding page, to two hundred and fifty yards. Then he says, the river being twelve hundred yards wide, this forms nearly one fourth of this width, and as the river rises twelve feet, when it has its whole breadth, if you reduce it one fourth, the water must rise in the same proportion; but three feet is to twelve feet what two hundred and fifty yards is to the whole breadth of the river; therefore the water will rise three feet,-which was to be demonstrated. It must be confessed that this is most admirably calculated. It is a pity to spoil so fine a piece of demonstration; but there are a few corrections which must be made, both to the proposition and the proof.

First, we must in point of fact reduce the two hundred and fifty yards to two hundred and seventy-six feet, which, instead of a fourth of the breadth of the river, is, according to his calculation, not quite one twelfth. Then instead of three feet, I should overflow the levee but one foot, which, by the preceding calculation, must be reduced to a little more than two lines; and in order to effect even this, I must deprive the water of its fluidity, or else, according to the usual course of things, it would, after passing the end of my canal, spread itself over its usual surface; for the plan exhibited by Mr. Jefferson, shews that my lower levee was not connected with the sides of the canal; unless therefore he could contrive to heap the mass of water, displaced by my works, on the surface of the river, and retain it there, he can never make it rise even to the fractional part of an inch, as I have shewn; and this even if the works were erected in the current. But Mr. Jefferson's manuscript affidavits, which he cites so frequently, if they say any thing on the subject, must say what I have before asserted, that the whole of that part of the batture which is inundated is in an eddy, and that consequently the current is no wise affected by any thing that is done there. The calculations, then, are as erroneous, as the facts which he assumes are unfounded. The batture was formed long before my works, or any others, were thought of in that place. Its progress has neither been hastened nor retarded by any thing that has been erected there. The puny works of man can neither arrest nor hasten the progress of those

changes which are produced by natural causes, impelling this mighty mass of waters. An attentive observer may perceive these causes, but as yet no human effort has been able to prevent their effects. The river, on an average, is twenty fathoms deep. The weight of this prodigious column of water, borne with a current of three miles an hour against a loose soil, undermines it at a depth which no piles can reach; and whole fields are sometimes precipitated at once into this abyss. When these excavations take place on a point, the batture formed by the eddy below it, becomes itself exposed to the depredations of the current.* In the mean time new eddies are formed; they become the agents of new deposits, and places which only a few years before were covered with twenty fathoms of water, begin to shew their heads above the stream. Until therefore some such change shall happen in the current of the river, above the town, as shall throw its force upon the batture of the suburb St. Mary, it will go on increasing in length down the river opposite the town, and in breadth towards the other shore. This progress was foreseen by Mr. Lafon, an engineer of great professional skill, in the year 1804, three years before my works were begun. The city council, alarmed by the progress which the river then made in undermining the levee a little above the government house, in the centre of the city, requested Mr. Lafon to devise some plan for defending it. He made them a very able report, which I am sorry the limits of my work will not permit me to insert, in which he tells them, that any work will be expensive and useless; that, by the natural progress of the river eating out the opposite bank, and filling up the one above the town, the batture of the suburb St. Mary will extend itself opposite the city, and that the course of the current will then strike be low the town. This has exactly happened, and the effect which Mr. Jefferson and his manuscript affidavits ascribe to my levee, is found to be produced from natural causes, foreseen and predicted three years before my works were begun; and there was no danger of any of those dreadful consequences which Mr. Jef

The batture in question bears unquestionable proof, in its physical conformation, of having undergone the change here described. Ia digging my canal, the stumps of a grove of large trees, three feet in diameter, were found in their natural position, rooted in the ground, twelve feet below the surface.