The army entered the city on the 26th of the same month, and subsequently withdrew to a distance of some miles. All danger was for the time at an end, and Mr. Buchanan issued a proclamation granting a pardon to those who had advanced upon the troops, and destroyed their military stores. The feud had been temporarily quieted by a compromise; but the Mormon difficulty yet remained for more effectual settlement in later years.

were despatched early in 1858. The Federal Government appear to have perceived that there was really some truth in the Mormon complaints with respect to the gross immorality and corruption of recent Federal

The different constructions placed by the British and American Governments on the terms of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, with respect to Central

south, to quit Utah, and even to abandon the Union itself. This intention was afterwards relinquished, and on the 12th of June the Prophet made a treaty of peace with Commissioners Powell and M'Culloch.

America, proved a source of much trouble on both sides of the Atlantic; and the matter was alluded Journey to the Great Salt Lake City. by Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley. Vol. I., chap. 5.

their occupancy at the date of the treaty. On the one hand it was believed that the operation of the document was retrospective as well as prospective; on the other, that it was prospective only. was prospective only. Mr. Buchanan observed that the United States would never have consented to such a treaty, had they supposed that England was to retain possession, in one form or another-either as owner or protector of the whole coast extending from the Rio Hondo to the port and harbour of San Juan de Nicaragua, together with the adjacent Bay Islands, excepting a small portion of the coast between the Sarstoon and Cape Honduras. For the sake of securing, as they believed, the entire neutrality of that part of America, the people of

and negotiations to this end were opened at London. On the 17th of October, 1856, a treaty was signed by Mr. Dallas, the American Minister in England, and by Lord Clarendon, Foreign Secretary in the Government of Lord Palmerston. On being submitted by President Pierce to the Senate, on the 10th of December in the same year, it underwent numerous modifications at the hands of that body, and was ratified by President Buchanan on the 12th of March, 1857. The treaty, as originally sent over to America, contained much which the Government and Legislature of the United States were not likely to sanction. It recognised the territorial possessions of the Mosquito Indians to their full extent. It confirmed

all bona fide grants of land made by those savages, even when beyond the limits of the territory reserved to them, and including a considerable tract within the boundaries of Greytown and in its immediate neighbourhood. It engaged the two Governments, in case the Republics of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, or either of them, should refuse to accept the arrangements contained in the previous articles, not to propose nor consent to any arrangement more favourable to the refusing party or parties. It authorised certain extensions of British Honduras to which the United States had always objected, and confirmed the western boundary of that settlement, if it were ratified within two years by the State of Guatemala. The amendments introduced into the Senate asserted that the sovereignty of the Bay Islands was vested exclusively in Honduras; that the sovereignty of the Mosquito Coast belonged exclusively to Nicaragua, the Indians having only a possessory right to their lands there; and that the United States did not in any way guarantee grants of land made to any parties by the Mosquito tribes. The object of the last of these provisions was generally believed to be the discouragement of British colonisation in those regions; but the only amendment to which England objected was that relating to the Bay Islands. The clause in the original treaty, while acknowledging these islands as part of the Republic of Honduras, confirmed the arrangements of the convention of 1856, by which, when the convention was fully concluded, they were to receive a distinct Government for all local purposes, and would be united with Honduras in little more than the name. For this clause the Senate substituted a simple recognition of the sovereign right of Honduras to the islands in question. Great Britain refused to assent to this alteration, and the treaty was therefore at an end. It was then proposed by Lord Clarendon to conclude another treaty, similar to the first, on the understanding that the United States would consent to add to the Senate's recognition of the sovereignty of Honduras over the Bay Islands, a clause affirming that the said recognition should not take place until the Republic of Honduras had concluded and ratified a treaty with Great Britain, by which that Power should have ceded, and Honduras should have accepted, the said islands, subject to the provisions and conditions contained in such treaty. As this was raising in another form what had already been most emphatically rejected by the American Senate, the proposal was of course declined. It is characteristic of the general views of Mr. Buchanan that he mentioned, among the objections to the convention negotiated

between England and Honduras, the introduction of a clause stipulating that slavery should not at any future time be permitted to exist in the latter country. The freedom to enslave was very dear to the party at that time represented by Mr. Buchanan, and he was jealous of anything which restricted it.

The Kansas question occupied a large place in the first annual Message of the new President. The elements of disturbance were yet in force when Mr. Buchanan took up the reins of power. Contest had indeed slackened for some time; but the opposing parties were still in arms, and nothing like a pacific agreement had been reached. On the 19th of February, 1857, the Territorial Legislature passed a law providing for the election of delegates, on the third Monday of June, to a convention which was to meet on the first Monday of September, for the purpose of framing a Constitution, preparatory to admission into the Union. At that time, an extensive organisation of Free Soil men existed in the Territory, the object of which was tɔ put down the existing pro-slavery Government by force, and to establish another more in accordance with the views of the agitators. Unfortunately, no proper provision had been made for submitting to the people the Constitution which might be framed by the convention; and this opened the door to numerous intrigues, and to apprehensions of violence which might in some cases have been groundless. When calling attention, in his Message of December, 1857, to the Act of Congress of the 30th of May, 1854, which left it to the people of each Territory or State to decide for themselves whether they would sanction slavery or not, Mr. Buchanan propounded these queries:-" Did Congress mean by this language that the delegates elected to frame a Constitution should have authority finally to decide the question of slavery; or did they intend, by leaving it to the people, that the people of Kansas themselves should decide this question by a direct vote?" The opinion of Mr. Buchanan himself was that the question should be decided by the immediate vote of the people. Such also was the view taken by the existing Congress; and to the people this great issue was ultimately submitted. As a general fact or principle, Mr. Buchanan was undoubtedly right in maintaining that in Democratic countries all questions of an organic nature should be submitted directly to the people. The majority in a popular assembly does not always or necessarily accord with the majority amongst the masses who elected that assembly; because, where the voting is divided amongst many districts, large minorities in some of

1857.]

those districts, added to large majorities in others, may give a total majority different from that which appears in the votes of the assembly. This is the principle upon which the Bonapartes have always proceeded in seeking election at the hands of the French people; and it is a perfectly fair and legitimate principle, though inapplicable to the ordinary working of political institutions. But the fatal objection in the case of Kansas proceeded from the fact that large numbers of persons had entered the Territory from Missouri, with the design, not of settling in Kansas as regular colonists, but of remaining there only a sufficient time to influence the elections in favour of slavery. The plebiscitum was therefore very likely to be a fraud; and on this account it was regarded with distrust and dislike by the Free Soil party.

The convention to frame a Constitution for Kansas met at Lecompton, according to appointment, in the early part of September. Many of the Free Soil men withheld from voting at the election for delegates, in obedience to that policy of abstention which has often been practised in France, but which has never been productive of any good. Abstention is the policy either of despair or of petulance: in the case of Kansas, it was probably the former. At any rate, it was to be regretted, as any abnegation of popular power must be injurious in a political condition which takes that power for its basis and authority. President Buchanan, in the course of some instructions to Governor Walker, expressed himself very strongly in favour of the whole Constitution being submitted to the people. But in the Kansas-Nebraska Act no such wide and general requirement had been made, and the convention was not bound to submit any portion of the Constitution to the popular vote, excepting that which related to the question of slavery. After a violent debate, the convention determined, though by a majority of only two, to submit that question to the people; and forty-three out of the fifty delegates present affixed their signatures to the Constitution. A large majority of the convention were in favour of establishing slavery in Kansas. An article with this view was accordingly inserted in the Constitution; and whether this should stand or not, was what had now to be determined by the settlers themselves, after the adjournment of the convention, which took place on the 7th of November. The schedule providing for the transition of Kansas from a Territorial to a State Government declared that, before the Constitution adopted by the convention should be sent to Congress, an election should be held, to decide whether it should be with or without slavery. At that

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election, all the white male inhabitants of the Territory above the age of twenty-one were entitled to vote. They were to vote by ballot, and the ballots cast at the election were to be endorsed, "Constitution with Slavery," and "Constitution with no Slavery." Should there be a majority in favour of the Constitution with slavery, it was to be transmitted to Congress by the president of the convention in its original form. If, on the contrary, there should be a majority in favour of the Constitution with no slavery, the article providing for slavery should be erased from the Constitution by the president of the convention. In that case it was expressly declared that no slavery should exist in the State of Kansas, excepting to this extent, that the right of property in slaves then in the Territory should not be interfered with. exception was a very serious one, because numerous slave-holders had already gone there with their human cattle; but such was the tenderness of the Kansas convention towards these men that they were permitted to take advantage of their own wrong. To Mr. Buchanan, however, this arrangement seemed in the highest degree fair and admirable. Referring to the negroes already in the Territory, he said :-"The number of these is very small; but if it were greater, the provision would be equally just and reasonable. These slaves were brought into the Territory under the Constitution of the United States, and are now the property of their masters. This point has at length been finally decided by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, and this upon the plain principle that when a confederacy of Sovereign States acquire a new Territory at their joint expense, both equality and justice demand that the citizens of one and all of them shall have the right to take into it whatsoever is recognised as property by the common Constitution. To have summarily confiscated the property of slaves already in the Territory, would have been an act of gross injustice, and contrary to the practice of the older States of the Union which have abolished slavery."* Mr. Buchanan seems here to have confused two things which were in truth totally distinct. It would, no doubt, have been unjust to confiscate the slaves while the question as to whether Kansas should or should not be a Slave State was still in abeyance. But, assuming that question to be decided in the negative, it was a monstrous aggression on the popular will (putting the morals of slavery entirely out of the question) to declare that a number of negroes, who had been taken into the country when their masters went

* Message to Congress, December 8th, 1857.

there to influence the elections, and whom there was plenty of time to send back pending the decision, should remain in a state of servitude which, in the case supposed, would have been against the fundamental laws of the State.

The civil war in Kansas came to a temporary close in July; but there were other causes at work to affect the tranquillity of the United States. Commercial panics created far-spread ruin in the summer and autumn of 1857. A condition of general prosperity had existed for several years; but, as frequently is the case, it had led to overtrading, and a serious revulsion set in. According to Mr. Buchanan, the existing misfortunes had proceeded solely from an extravagant and vicious system of paper-currency and bank-credits, exciting the people to wild speculations, and to gambling in the stocks. The result had been that, in the midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions of agriculture and all the elements of national wealth, manufactures were suspended, public works retarded, private enterprises abandoned, and thousands of labourers thrown out of employment. The revenue of the Government had in consequence been greatly reduced, since, being chiefly derived from duties on imports, it was necessarily affected by whatever influenced the general prosperity and money-spending power of the people. Mr. Buchanan inveighed in his Message very emphatically against the system of paper-currency, with its tendency to extravagant expansion, the evil effect of which was seen in the nominal price of every article being raised far above its real value when compared with the cost of similar articles in countries where the

circulation was more wisely regulated. He remarked that it was one of the highest and most responsible duties of Government to ensure to the people a sound circulating medium, the amount of which ought to be adapted to the wants of internal trade and foreign exchanges. "Unfortunately," he added, "under the construction of the Federal Constitution which has now prevailed too long to be changed, this important and delicate duty has been dissevered from the coining power, and virtually transferred to more than one thousand four hundred State Banks, acting independently of each other, and regulating their paper issues almost exclusively by a regard to the present interests of their stock-holders. Exercising the sovereign power of providing a paper-currency, instead of coin, for the country, the first duty which these banks owe to the public is to keep in their vaults a sufficient amount of gold and silver to ensure the convertibility of their notes into coin at all times, and under all circumstances. No bank ought ever to be chartered without such restrictions on its business as to secure this result. All other restrictions are comparatively vain." Such a system, however, did not exist in the United States. From a report made by the Treasury Department in 1857, it appeared that the American banks had in the aggregate considerably less than one dollar in seven, of gold and silver, compared with their circulation and deposits. Any unusual pressure, therefore, compelled them to suspend payment; and commercial ruin of the most terrible character followed, as the natural consequence of a system which was radically unsound.

In the latter part of 1857, Walker, the Filibuster, made another descent on Nicaragua. Encouraged by the sympathy with which he was received on being conveyed to New Orleans, in May, after the failure of his former enterprise, he at once resolved upon a renewed attempt. It took some months to

bring together a sufficient number of fighting men, and to make all necessary preparations; but on the 25th of November he landed at Punta Arenas with four hundred troops, if such they can be called. Although the expedition had been long in course of organisation, nothing was done to prevent its sailing;