CHAPTER to make such appointments very desirable. The colII. lectorships of Boston, New London, and Baltimore were 1789. given to Generals. Lincoln, Huntington, and Williams; that of New York to Colonel Lamb. General M⭑Intosh was appointed surveyor of the port of Savannah, and General Sullivan district judge of New Hampshire. Generals St. Clair and Parsons were continued in their respective offices, the one as governor, the other as a judge of the Northwest Territory. Many officers of inferior rank were otherwise provided for. But Washington's appointments were by no means confined to military men, the larger proportion being selected from civil life, into which, indeed, the officers of the late Revolutionary army had been long since absorbed.

The Senate at first adopted the practice, afterward dispensed with, of passing upon all nominations by ballot. Of those made during the first session of Congress, only one seems to have been rejected. The question was early raised as to the capacity of persons holding office under the United States, or elected members of Congress, to continue to sit in the state Legislatures. The decision that these two functions were incompatible was soon arrived at, and has ever since been adhered to. The law of Virginia, disqualifying United States officers to hold any state office, has been already mentioned. The first appointments having been made, the patronage of the president, since so extensive, remained, during the earlier years of the government, comparatively trifling.

The external relations of the United States, both those with the countries of Europe and those with the Indian tribes along the Western and Southern frontier, early called for attention on the part of the new government. Under the auspices of the Continental Congress, commercial treaties had been negotiated with France, Holland,

II.

Sweden, and Prussia. The two former powers, as well CHAPTER as Spain, had ministers resident in the United States. A treaty with the Emperor of Morocco afforded but a 1789. partial security against the cruisers of the African piratical states, who were accustomed, at that day, not only to capture the vessels of all nations not in alliance with them in other words, not paying tribute-but also to reduce the crews to slavery. Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, as well as Morocco, each had to be separately conciliated. The cruisers of these states generally confined themselves to the Mediterranean, into which American vessels did not venture for fear of them. But sometimes they sallied forth into the Atlantic, and the interference of the new government had been already solicited on behalf of certain American citizens captured and held in slavery by the Algerines.

A consular convention with France, framed in accordance with a plan agreed to by the Continental Congress in 1782, had been signed by Franklin in 1784. But the inconveniences of this arrangement, when it came to be submitted to the Continental Congress for ratification, had plainly appeared. It gave to the consuls of the two nations complete jurisdiction over the merchants and mariners of the nation they represented -a jurisdiction which could hardly be exercised without serious danger of collision with the local authorities. Jefferson had therefore been instructed to ask for modifications, and especially for the insertion of a limitation of time. After a long negotiation, this limitation and some other modifications had been lately conceded, and the convention, having been signed anew, had been submitted to the Senate, during the late session, for their advice as to its ratification. Called upon by the Senate for a report upon the subject, Jay stated that, though

CHAPTER still very objectionable in several of its provisions, yet, II. considering the circumstances under which it had been 1789. formed, the United States could not honorably decline to

ratify it. Upon the strength of this report, the Senate advised its ratification, and to that advice the president conformed.

The Chevalier de Luzerne, who had left the United States about a year before, had been succeeded in the French embassy by the Count de Moustier, a person so objectionable on many accounts, moral as well as political, that the subject of his recall had already been pressed upon the French court. As there was no good understanding between Jay and Moustier, the French minister had attempted to open a diplomatic intercourse directly with the president; but to this Washington would

not assent.

The general method of business adopted by Washington was to refer all letters and other applications to the head of some department for report, which report he approved, or suggested alterations in it, as the case might be. If grave doubts arose, the matter was referred to a cabinet consultation. If the cabinet did not agree and doubts were still left in Washington's mind, he was usually governed in his decision by a majority of voices.

To supply temporarily the place left vacant by the return of Jefferson, Washington appointed William Short as chargé des affaires at the French court. Short had originally gone to Paris as Jefferson's private secretary, and after the return of Humphries had been appointed secretary of legation. Carmichael, the resident minister at Madrid, was still continued there. No progress had yet been made in the negotiation with Spain as to the limits of Florida and the navigation of the Mississippi. Indeed, a scheme was believed to be on foot, under the

II.

patronage of the Governor of Louisiana, for detaching CHAPTER
from the Union the settlements west of the Alleganies,
with a view to form them into an independent state, or, 1789.
what would have been more agreeable to the Spanish,
a province of Spain-an intrigue in which several in-
fluential persons in Kentucky were concerned, some of
them being regular pensioners of Spain, of which full
proof was brought to light many years afterward. The
bait to be held out to the Western settlers was the free
navigation of the Mississippi. It was, perhaps, as an
aid to this design, that the Spanish government had re-
cently granted to several American citizens a large tract
of territory on the west bank of the Mississippi. Several
officers of the late Revolutionary army were concerned
in this enterprise, which led to the establishment of the
settlement of New Madrid. But the projectors seem not
to have realized the expected profits, and the intended
colony was soon abandoned.

A good deal of jealousy had also been excited by the movements of Wilkinson, formerly an officer in the Revolutionary army, having served as Gates's adjutant general in the campaign against Burgoyne, and conspicuous from his unintentional agency in bringing Conway's intrigues to light. Wilkinson had recently established himself as a merchant in Kentucky, had descended the Mississippi with a cargo of tobacco, and, being a person of much address, had not only obtained liberty to sell it, but had entered into a contract with the Spanish governor for a regular supply, the government to be the purchasers of all he might send. Wilkinson was strongly suspected by many of being a party to the Spanish intrigue for the separation of Kentucky from the Union; but this was a charge which he always denied, and of which no distinct proof was ever adduced.

CHAPTER

II.

Nor was it from Spanish intrigues alone that the peace of the West was threatened. That same Dr. Conolly 1789. who had attempted, in conjunction with Governor Dunmore, at the commencement of the Revolutionary war, to collect troops in the settlements about Pittsburg, in order to attack Virginia in the rear, and who was now a resident in Canada and a lieutenant colonel in the British service, had lately paid a visit to Kentucky, nominally to look after some forfeited lands of his, but, as was believed, with the hope of enlisting men there for an attack on New Orleans. A breach between the British and Spanish courts on the question of the right of the British to trade to Nootka Sound, which threatened a war between those nations, had encouraged Conolly to meditate an enterprise which the continuance of peace made it necessary to abandon, nor does he appear to have met with much encouragement in it from the people of Kentucky.

The relations with Great Britain were on a footing no better than those with Spain. The Navigation Act, that "guardian of the prosperity of Great Britain," as Lord Sheffield called it in his famous pamphlet on the American trade, was, as we have seen, strictly enforced. The exclusion of American vessels from the British West Indies, hitherto left to ministerial discretion, and regu lated by orders in council, had been made perpetual by a late act of Parliament. The feeling excited by that exclusion, and by a prevailing sentiment that, though forced to resign her political supremacy, Britain was still bent on retaining her late colonies in a sort of commercial subjection, had been fully displayed in the late debates in Congress on the subject of discriminating duties. On the ground of obstacles placed in the way of the collection of British ante-Revolutionary debts, the