2-1783, of the convention which in
1788 ratified for Massachusetts the Federal Constitution, and from 1791 to
1796 of the United States Senate, in which, besides serving on various
important committees, he became recognized as an authority on economic and
commercial matters. Among the bills introduced by him in the Senate was the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. Upon the establishment of the navy department
in 1798, he was appointed and confirmed as its secretary, but he never
performed the duties of the office, and was soon replaced by Benjamin
Stoddert (1751-1813), actually though not nominally the first secretary of
the department. In 1814-1815 Cabot was the president of the Hartford
Convention, and as such was then and afterwards acrimoniously attacked by
the Republicans throughout the country. He died in Boston on the 18th of
April 1823. In politics he was a staunch Federalist, and with Fisher Ames,
Timothy Pickering and Theophilus Parsons (all of whom lived in Essex
county, Massachusetts) was classed as a member of the "Essex Junto",--a
wing of the party and not a formal organization. A fervent advocate of a
strong centralized government, he did much to secure the ratification by
Massachusetts of the Federal Constitution, and after the overturn of the
Federalist by the Republican party, he wrote (1804): "We are democratic
altogether, and I hold democracy in its natural operation to be a
government of the worst".

See Henry Cabot Lodge's _Life and Letters of George Cabot_ (Boston, 1877).

CABOT, JOHN [GIOVANNI CABOTO] (1450-1498), Italian navigator and discoverer
of North America, was born in Genoa, but in 1461 went to live in Venice, of
which he became a naturalized citizen in 1476. During one of his trading
voyages to the eastern Mediterranean, Cabot paid a visit to Mecca, then the
greatest mart in the world for the exchange of the goods of the East for
those of the West. On inquiring whence came the spices, perfumes, silks and
precious stones bartered there in great quantities, Cabot learned that they
were brought by caravan from the north-eastern parts of farther Asia. Being
versed in a knowledge of the sphere, it occurred to him that it would be
shorter and quicker to bring these goods to Europe straight across the
western ocean. First of all, however, a way would have to be found across
this ocean from Europe to Asia. Full of this idea, Cabot, about the year
1484, removed with his family to London. His plans were i