el show. The petition was ordered to lie upon the table. On
December 11 Messrs. Rutherford, Cabot, Ellsworth, Livermore, and
Mitchell were appointed a committee to consider the petition. These
gentlemen, Gallatin wrote, were undoubtedly "the worst for him that
could have been chosen, and did not seem to him to be favorably
disposed." He himself considered the legal point involved as a nice and
difficult one, and likely to be decided by a party vote. The fourth
article of the Constitution of the first Confederation of the United
States reads as follows:--

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and
intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union,
the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds,
and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States."

Article 1, section 3, of the new Constitution declares:--

"No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the
age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
State for which he shall be chosen."

Mr. Gallatin landed in Massachusetts in July, 1780, while still a minor.
His residence, therefore, which had been uninterrupted, extended over
thirteen years. He took the oath of citizenship and allegiance to
Virginia in October, 1785, since which, until his election in 1793, nine
years, the period called for by the United States Constitution, had not
elapsed. On the one hand, his actual residence exceeded the required
period of citizenship; on the other, his legal and technical residence
as a citizen was insufficient. In point of fact, his intention to become
a citizen dated from the summer of 1783.

To take from the case the air of party proscription, which it was
beginning to assume, the Senate discharged its special committee, and
raised a general committee on elections to consider this and other
cases. On February 10, 1794, the report of this committee was submitted,
and a day was set for a hearing by the Senate, with open doors. On that
day Mr. Gallatin exhibited a written statement of facts, agreed to
between himself and the petitioners, and the case was left to the Senate
on its merits. On the 28th a test vote was taken upon a motion to the
effect that "Albert Gallatin, returned to this House as a member for