John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

8. VII: The weather has moderated, and the greatest part of this day was a warm rain, which carried off great part of the Snow— At one O’Clock I attended at the President’s, and presented to him the Viscount de Quabeck, the Charge d’Affaires from the Netherlands, who delivered a Letter from the king, announcing the Death of his only Sister the Dutchess of Brunswick. These official notifications become so frequent, and the foreign Ministers are all so punctilious to deliver them in form and ceremony that they have become quite tedious to me— This like the rest however was only an Audience of five minutes— After he was gone, I had a conversation of at least two hours with the President in which I partly opened to him the anxiety which has long been labouring upon my mind— He said that the two Senators from Georgia had been with him yesterday, and had freely consulted with him on the State of Affairs with Spain; and this affair of the Florida Treaty— As members from Georgia they were apprehensive that their State would become impatient if nothing should be done, and they came to discuss the various measures which are projected in Congress. The predominant disposition in that body is to do nothing upon this subject; and this disposition will certainly prevail. Nothing will be done— But as this will not exactly suit the temper of the People; the object of the opposition is to appear to stimulate Congress to something else than what was recommended by the President. I have ever since the question arose upon the ratification of the Florida Treaty, indistinctly foreseen that it would come to this result. A little more intense thought would have drawn the deductions as irresistible from a few very simple principles. Congress will do nothing; because to do any thing they must assume the responsibility of consequences—because they must incur at least the hazard of a War—taxation upon the people—and after all the Executive would get the principal credit of all that Congress would do— One of the most remarkable features of what I am witnessing every day is a perpetual struggle in both houses of Congress to controul the Executive, to make it dependent upon, and subservient to them— They are continually attempting to encroach upon the Powers and authorities of 243the President. As the old line of demarcation between parties has broken down, personal has taken the place of principled opposition— The personal friends of the President in the House are neither numerous nor so active, nor so able as his opponents. Crawfords personal friends, instead of befriending the Administration, operate as powerfully as they can without exposing or avowing their motives against it— Every act and thought of Crawford looks to the next Presidency. All his Springs of action work not upon the present but upon the future; and yet his path in the Department is now beset with thorns from which he shrinks, and which I think he will not ward off with success— In short, as the first Presidential term of Mr Monroe’s administration has hitherto been the period of the greatest national tranquility enjoyed by this Nation, at any portion of its history, so it appears to me scarcely avoidable that his second term will be among the most stormy and violent. I told him this day that I thought the difficulties before him were thickening, and becoming hourly more and more formidable. In our foreign Relations, we stood upon terms with England, as favourable as can ever be expected, but with a state of things dissatisfactory for the present, and problematical for the future, with regard to our commercial intercourse with her American Colonies. With France our situation was much less pleasing and more unpromising— She is pressing absurd claims, and refusing satisfaction for the most just and equivocal claims on our part. She is screwing down upon us the most unequal and burdensome Navigation Laws, and leaves unanswered repeated and urgent proposals for a commercial Negotiation— Our affairs with Spain are such that the Administration has lost all the credit and strength which it would have derived from the Florida Treaty and although no immediate danger from that quarter is to be apprehended the Government is injured by the failure of Congress to adopt the measures recommended by the Executive, and it will be scarcely possible without a disposal of Providence, over which we have no control, and which we have no right to expect, to come out of that controversy without loss of national character. With the Netherlands, Naples, Sweden and Denmark, we have claims for indemnity or restitution, which there is no prospect of obtaining; with Portugal we have angry discussions upon claims against us, which we cannot admit, but for which too much cause has been given; and although we have done more than any other Nation for the South-Americans, they are discontented because we have not espoused their cause in arms, and with empty professions of friendship they have no real sympathy with us. A prospect thus dark and unpropitious abroad, is far more gloomy and threatening when we turn our eyes homeward— The Bank, the national currency, the stagnation of commerce, the depression of manufactures, the restless turbulence, and jealousies and insubordination of the State Legislatures, the Missouri Slave Question, the deficiencies of the revenue to be supplied; the rankling passions and ambitious projects of individuals, mingling with every thing, presented a prospect of the future, which I freely acknowledged was to me appalling— I asked him whether these apprehensions were visionary; and if not, whether he had contemplated any distinct system of measures to be in preparation, for the embarrassments which it was obvious to foresee as inevitable, at no distant day— He said that as to the Missouri question, he apprehended no great danger from that— He believed a compromise would be found and agreed to, which would be satisfactory to all parties— I did not enquire further, though I was much surprized at this remark— All the public appearances are directly the reverse, and either there is an underplot in operation upon this subject of which I had no suspicion, or the President has a very inadequate idea of the real state of that controversy; or he assumed an air of tranquility concerning it, in which there was more caution than candour; more reserve than sincerity. With respect to the Bank, he said no man had a more convincing experience of its absolute necessity than he had during the late War, when he had been obliged to borrow money on his own responsibility wherever he could obtain it; and which at one place was at one stage of depretiation, and another at another— And as to the Constitutional objections, Mr Madison, and Mr Jefferson himself had considered them as settled by twenty years of practice and acquiescence under the First Bank— I said that the existence or continuance of the Bank, appeared to me to be a matter of perfect indifference to the Stockholders; and indeed if I were one of them, I should incline to petition Congress to take back their Charter, and restore to the proprietors their Capital; but it was my firm belief that this Union could not hold together, while every State exercised an unlimited power of making paper money under the pretence of incorporating Banks; unless the General Government by such a Bank, substantially 244under its controul, and always regulating the National Currency, by preserving specie payments inviolate, could preserve the obligations of contracts and give security to property, against the frauds of paper swindling. I also believed that the present deadly struggle in so many of the States, with all its lumbering machinery of State Legislatures was nothing more or less than a combined effort of State Bank interests and of desperate debtors thursting for a paper spunge to wipe off their debts— And that the very process of purgation against which they so convulsively heaved was the only effectual remedy for the disorders of the currency— He said he was entirely of the same opinion. I asked him whether any plan was matured for meeting the deficiency in the revenue, announced in the annual Report on the finances, of the Secretary of the Treasury; and which deficiency I apprehended would turn out to be larger than he had estimated. He said he did not know— That Mr Crawford, conformably to a practice which had been observed from the time when Mr Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury, had made the annual Report without shewing it to him; and he did not know what Mr Crawford’s views for supplying the deficiency were. I was much surprized to here that Reports so important to the whole system of Administration as the annual exposition of the State of the finances should be made to Congress without being first even shewn to the President— I thought it altogether inconsistent with the Spirit of the Constitution, and that the practice ought immediately to be changed. Now this Report of Crawford, after indicating the supposed deficiency, skulks from a specific recommendation of a remedy; for it mentions three or four without marking a preference for either— The President said we had ample resources for covering the deficiency; to which I readily assented. But the necessity was, and I apprehended the difficulty would be to fix upon that particular resource upon which we are to rely— For the principle of opposition tactics is, when they agree with administration as to the end, to differ from them as to the means; and as there is a choice of means it behooves the Administration to select that which they may think the best, and be prepared to support it by their friends in Congress, where it will be difficult enough to get any one through; and where that which they prefer will for that very reason be encountered by all the bickerings of systematic opposition. I added that I thought the best and easiest mode of providing for the deficiency of the current year, was to suspend the purchases of the sinking fund. He said that was his own opinion; but Genl. Smith of Maryland, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means had been to him this morning, and told him he had made yesterday a motion to that effect in the House, which had been rejected; because the members entertained the opinion, that the deficiency might be covered by retrenchment of expenses; and thought the retrenchment would be lost, if the means of covering the deficiency should be granted from the sinking fund— I said I thought the project of retrenchment, to the amount of the deficiency would prove fallacious, or if carried into effect, would be more injurious to the public than the saving of the money could do them good. But while these plans were afloat it became still more essential to the administration to have some plan of its own to meet the exigency of the case; for if the drain upon the revenue should remain unprovided for, until it should come to press upon the detail of current business, it would injure the character of the Administration, and the credit of the Country, more than a deficiency of ten times the amount of that now to be provided for could do— The President desired me to look into the Law, requiring these Reports from the Secretary of the Treasury to Congress, which he said he would also do; and if it should warrant the measure, he would have a consultation with the members of the Administration, to advise upon what it may be proper to do. He said it had always struck him that this practice of reporting by the Secretary of the Treasury, directly to Congress, without communication with the President was wrong, and the occasion upon which he was first informed of it was itself an instance of its bad effects— It was a Report made by Mr Gallatin just at the commencement of the late War with England— A report, the tendency of which was exceedingly unfavourable to the measures then contemplated by Mr. Madison. He himself had been so much surprized, upon first reading it that he immediately enquired of Mr Madison how it had been permitted to appear; he answered that it had been equally unexpected and displeasing to him; but that he had not seen it before it was presented to the house, and that from the practice having originated with Genl. Hamilton, it was supposed that there were considerations of delicacy, for its being withheld from the President until after having been presented to Congress— I said I could see no reason for such delicacy; but numerous motives for every such paper’s being submitted to the President before it goes to Congress— He also told me that Mr Holmes, a member of the Committee of Foreign Relations, had been to him and told him, that Mr Lowndes the Chairman had 245drafted and presented to the Committee a Report, disapproving the measure recommended by the President, of giving him a discretionary authority to take possession of Florida, and proposing a postponement of any measures for the present. It was objected to this Report that if presented to the House, by shewing a disagreement with the Executive it would weaken his hands in any Negotiation with the Minister who may come from Spain, and upon this Consideration it was determined not to report for the present at-all— I told the President I thought it quite immaterial, whether they reported against the measure recommended in the Message, or did not report at all— The game was up in either case— We should neither have the Treaty ratified, nor Florida for the present— The Treaty was gone forever; but the ground upon which we stand is safe— Some convulsion may take place in Spain, upon which we may be obliged to occupy Florida, or some chance may again occur upon which we may receive it by Treaty— The advantages of the abortive Treaty and more may be ultimately secured to the Country, but all the benefit which was hoped from it, for the Administration is lost— From the President’s I returned for a short time to my Office— Spent the Evening with all the family at the French Minister Hyde de Neuville’s. It was a dancing party. Clay and Trimble, both drew me into Conversation upon the Florida Treaty; Trimble to shew his profound sagacity, and Clay, to entrap me if he could into some unguarded speech, which he might hereafter turn against me, in debate at the House— We came home about eleven O’Clock.