Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/418

1804. of State for such Acts of the British Parliament as imposed heavier duties on the exportation of merchandise to the United States than on similar goods exported to the nations of Europe. Such an export duty upon merchandise for the United States and the West Indies had in fact been imposed by Parliament some two years before; and this Resolution foreshadowed some commercial retaliation by Congress.

While sending to his Government these warnings to expect from Jefferson's second administration a degree of hostility more active than from the first, Merry suggested means of giving the United States occupation that should induce them to leave England alone. A new element of conspiracy disclosed itself to the British minister.

Under the Louisiana treaty of cession, the United States government had promised that "the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States." This pledge had been broken. The usual display of casuistry had been made to prove that the infraction of treaty was no infraction at all; but the more outspoken Republicans avowed, as has been already shown, that the people of Louisiana could not be trusted, or in the commoner phrase that they were unfit for self-government, and must be treated as a