Features of Mr. Jay's Treaty. to Which Is Annexed a View of the Commerce of the United States, as It Stands at Present, and as It Is Fixed by Mr. Jay's Treaty
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Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Courts of Pennsylvania, Before and Since the Revolution, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the C...)
Excerpt from Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged in the Courts of Pennsylvania, Before and Since the Revolution, Vol. 1
I AM not able to write with my own hand, and therefore, must beg leave to use another, to acknowledge the honor you have done me, by your most obliging and elegant letter, and the sending me Dallas' Reports.
I am not able to read myself, but I have heard them read with much pleasure. They do credit to the court, the bar and the reporter: they show readiness in practice, liberality in principle, strong reason and legal learning: the method, too, is clear, and the language plain.
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An exposition of the causes and character of the late war with Great Britain
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(Life and Writings of Alexander James Dallas is an unchang...)
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Alexander James Dallas was an American lawyer, who handled many cases with ability and skill. A period of his life was devoted to political activity. Commissioned as secretary of the treasury, he offered the ways of taxation to restore national banking institution.
Background
Alexander James Dallas was born on June 21, 1759 in Kingston, Jamaica. He was the third son of Robert Dallas and his second wife Sarah (Cormack) Hewett Dallas.
His father, son of James and Barbara (Cockburn) Dallas of St. Martin’s, Scotland, emigrated from that country and practised medicine with considerable success in the West Indies.
After financial reverses, his father died, and shortly afterward his mother married Capt. Sutherland of the British navy.
Education
After a few years the family returned from the West Indies to the British Isles where Alexander James attended Kensington School and Edinburgh University; at the former place his scholastic merit attracted the attention of two visitors of the school, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Samuel Johnson.
After father's death, the children were encouraged to look to other sources for support, so Alexander in his fifteenth year determined to study law, but postponed this ambition to become a merchant clerk and accountant for his uncle, Mr. Gray. After two years in the latter’s business house he returned to Devonshire and resumed academic studies, applying himself under the guidance of a tutor to ancient and modern literature.
Career
After marriage, he and his wife quitted England and joined their families in the West Indies. Dallas was there admitted to the bar and appointed a Master in Chancery by Gov. Dalling. Promotion seemed imminent, but his wife’s health necessitated a different climate.
While contemplating a return to England, and inclined to devote his life to the church, he met the actor, Lewis Hal- lam, Jr. , who had lived several years in the American colonies prior to the Revolution and during their struggle for independence. His description of conditions in the United States influenced Dallas to seek citizenship there.
Arriving in New York City on June 7, they proceeded to Philadelphia where Dallas signed citizenship papers ten days later. Resolutely he and his wife assembled their meager possessions, secured letters of introduction to William Bingham and Robert Morris, and on April 10, 1783, embarked for the new country. Arriving in New York City on June 7, they proceeded to Philadelphia where Dallas signed citizenship papers ten days later.
A serious and annoying obstacle developed when Dallas found that a newly established requirement of two years’ residence in the state must be met before he could satisfy his cherished desire to practise law.
By chance he had taken lodgings near the offices of Jonathan Burrall, commissioner for settling the accounts of the commissary and quartermaster’s departments of the Revolutionary army. Acquaintance was established, and Dallas was invited to a desk in Burrall's office, where he remained until he opened his own office before the end of 1783.
On July 13, 1785, he was admitted as counselor in the supreme court of Pennsylvania.
On the return of Hallam from Jamaica in the spring of 1784, he and Dallas attempted the introduction of the regular drama into Philadelphia.
Not only did Dallas draw up a memorial to the local legislature in an attempt to allay the common prejudice against the theatre, but even turned his pen to dramatic plots.
He also contributed to local papers many articles on pressing political questions and items of literary interest, and in 1787 he served as editor of the Columbian Magazine, a monthly miscellany.
It was during this period that he edited the first reports of the United States Supreme Court.
Dallas’s first political appointment came on January 19, 1791, when he was chosen secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Gov. Thomas Mifflin. He remained with Mifflin through two reappointments, and received one appointment from Gov. McKean.
Early in March 1805 he aided in the establishment of the Constitutional Republican party, which supported the judiciary of Pennsylvania against the assaults of the extreme Democratic faction, and at various other times devoted himself to political activity.
In 1794, at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion, he was appointed aide-decamp to the governor and as paymaster-general with the military forces he was brought into personal contact with Washington and Alexander Hamilton. His second public appointment came on March 10, 1801, when he was commissioned United States district attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by President Jefferson.
During Dallas’s thirteen years in this office he handled many cases with ability and skill, including the Olmstead case in 1809, which, due to the ill-defined and conflicting jurisdiction of local and national authorities, aroused considerable controversy. While holding the office he was maligned by political enemies, and from one editor, John Ward Fcnno, recovered $2, 500 for libel. Albert Gallatin, a close personal friend of Dallas, left the United States Treasury in May 1813 to promote the mediation of Russia in the War of 1812.
President Madison had wished to appoint Dallas to succeed him, but the opposition of the radical Pennsylvania senators, Michael Leib and Abner Lacock, precluded that choice.
George W. Campbell was appointed, but his efforts to prevent the suspension of specie payments and provide suitable funds to prosecute the war were weak and fruitless.
When he resigned in despair on September 26, 1814, the situation was so desperate that, on October 6, almost as a last resort, Dallas was commissioned secretary of the treasury. He entered office with a bankrupt treasury; the official stoppage of interest payments on the debt was announced in a letter of November 17.
His first formal act was an immediate message on October 17 to the Committee on Ways and Means in which he insisted upon a permanent annual revenue of twenty-one million dollars from taxes and duties, a yearly war revenue of like amount to be raised by doubling the direct tax and rate of postage, and a national bank to provide a circulating medium and facilitate exchange. This report had a far-reaching psychological effect, and did much to restore confidence. Interest-bearing treasury notes of small denomination were issued in discreet quantities to furnish momentary relief. After some scattered opposition in Congress, his measures for the heaviest taxation hitherto levied by the national government were adopted.
The charter of the Bank of the United States had expired in 1811, but Dallas recognized that a national banking institution was the only efficient remedy for the disordered condition of the circulating medium.
But after his plan for a bank emerged from the opposition and wrangling of Congress it was so altered that, upon his advice, Madison vetoed the bill.
This blighting of prospects was somewhat alleviated by the cessation of war toward the end of 1814.
The lack of regulation of state banks and the general financial confusion having forced the Republican leaders to revise their former stand, Calhoun, on January 8, 1816, introduced a bank bill modeled closely on a plan recommended by Dallas. On April 10 it became law. American shipping had been ruined by the war, and manufacturing industries developed with the advent of peace. In his report of February 12, 1816, Dallas made recommendations in regard to a protective tariff that were largely adopted, and thus furnished the basis of a system for the following thirty years.
The illness of Monroe caused Dallas to take upon himself, in addition, the duties of acting secretary of war on March 14, 1815.
Carrying them until August 8, he organized the army upon a peace establishment of ten thousand men. Although he gave notice in April 1816 of his intended resignation, he was persuaded to remain until the new bank was organized and definite provision made for the resumption of specie payments.
On October 20, 1816, these conditions practically accomplished, he formally quit the treasury, leaving with Madison a highly creditable report.
Treasury receipts had far exceeded the estimates.
Dallas returned to the practise of law in Philadelphia in an effort to recoup his private fortunes, but scarcely three months later while attending a case in Trenton, New Jersey, he was seized with what doctors pronounced to be “gout in the stomach. ” He was immediately taken home, and a few hours later he died. He left incomplete and unpublished a history of Pennsylvania.
(Life and Writings of Alexander James Dallas is an unchang...)
Personality
In physical appearance Alexander James Dallas was commanding.
In dress he was meticulous, and his powdered hair, the wearing of which was a rapidly disappearing custom, added a formal touch not inconsistent with his highly polished manners.
A prodigious worker, he had the faculty of unbending readily from toil to ease and vivacity, and specially excelled in conversation.
Connections
On September 4, 1780, Dallas married Arabella Maria Smith, daughter of Major George Smith of the British army, who was stationed in Jamaica.
One of his sons, George Mifflin Dallas, became vice-president.