slature, they could carry no proposition on
which the opposition was united; and the party which had become the
majority in the house of representatives, had been generally hostile
to that mode of obtaining revenue. From an opinion that direct taxes
were recommended by intrinsic advantages, or that the people would
become more attentive to the charges against the administration,
should their money be drawn from them by visible means, those who
wished power to change hands, had generally manifested a disposition
to oblige those who exercised it, to resort to a system of revenue, by
which a great degree of sensibility will always be excited. The
indirect taxes proposed in the committee of ways and means were
strongly resisted; and only that which proposed an augmentation of the
duty on carriages for pleasure was passed into a law.

[Sidenote: Congress adjourns.]

On the first day of June, this long and interesting session was
terminated. No preceding legislature had been engaged in discussions
by which their own passions, or those of their constituents were more
strongly excited; nor on subjects more vitally important to the United
States.

From this view of the angry contests of party, it may not be
unacceptable to turn aside for a moment, and to look back to a
transaction in which the movements of a feeling heart discover
themselves, not the less visibly, for being engaged in a struggle with
the stern duties of a public station.

[Sidenote: The president endeavors to procure the liberation of
Lafayette.]

No one of those foreigners who, during the war of the revolution, had
engaged in the service of the United States, had embraced their cause
with so much enthusiasm, or had held so distinguished a place in the
affections of General Washington, as the Marquis de Lafayette. The
attachment of these illustrious personages to each other had been
openly expressed, and had yielded neither to time, nor to the
remarkable vicissitude of fortune with which the destinies of one of
them had been chequered. For his friend, while guiding the course of a
revolution which fixed the anxious attention of the world, or while a
prisoner in Prussia, or in the dungeon of Olmutz, the President
manifested the same esteem, and felt the same solicitude. The extreme
jealousy, however, with which the persons who administered the
government of France, as well as a large party in America, watched his
deportment towards all those whom the feroc