of the people the executive tends to
prodigality, to taxes, and to wars. He closed with a hope that a fixed
determination to prevent the increase of the national expenditure, and
to detach the country from any connection with European politics, would
tend to reconcile parties, promote the happiness of America, and
conciliate the affection of every part of the Union. No such admirable
exposition of the true American doctrine of non-interference with
European politics had at that time been heard in Congress.

In reply, Harper insisted on the admission that the purpose of the
amendment of Nicholas was to restrain the President; that it was a
question of power, not of money. Mr. Gallatin admitted the right of
appointment, but denied that the House was bound to appropriate. Harper
rejoined that the offices did not originate with the President but with
the Constitution, and that they could not be destroyed by the action of
the House, and, leaving the general ground of debate, made a brilliant
attack upon the Republicans as revolutionists, whom he divided into
three classes: the philosophers, the Jacobins, and the _sans-culottes_.
The philosophers are most to be dreaded. "They declaim with warmth on
the miseries of mankind, the abuses of government, and the vices of
rulers; all which they engage to remove, providing their theories should
once be adopted. They talk of the perfectibility of man and of the
dignity of his nature; and, entirely forgetting what he is, declaim
perpetually about what he should be." Of Jacobins there are plenty. They
profit by the labors of others; tyrants in power, demagogues when not.
Fortunately for America there are few or no _sans-culottes_ among her
inhabitants. Jefferson, he said, returned from France a missionary to
convert Americans to the new faith, and he charged that the system of
French alliance and war with Great Britain by the United States was a
part of the scheme of the French revolutionists, and was imported into
this country. Gallatin and his friends he regarded in the light of an
enemy who has commenced a siege against the fortress of the
Constitution.

The restricting amendment was lost, and the bill passed by a vote of 52
yeas to 43 nays. Nor is it easy to see how the theory of Mr. Gallatin
with regard to diplomatic relations could have been applied successfully
with the existing channels of intercourse. Now that the ocean cable
brings governments into direct relation with each