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ery in the West Indies. General Wilson told him that in abolishing slavery in that colony, the government was not moved by any consideration for the negro, but that the measure would naturally create an enthusiastic anti- slavery sentiment in England and America. And that in America this would in time excite a hostility between the free states and the slave states which would end in the dissolution of the American Union, and the consequent failure of the grand experiment of democratic government. While the ruin of democracy in America would be the perpetuation of aristocracy in England.
This view of the matter was evidently taken by Sir Robert Peel, also, as he said of the money paid to free the negroes in the West Indies, that in his opinion "it was the best investment ever made for the overthrow of republican institutions in America."
This conspiracy between the agents of the British govern- ment in Canada arid the leading Federalists of New England came to the knowledge of President Madison, who laid all the proofs before Congress. In his message he said:
I lay before Congress copies of certain documents which remain in the department of State. They prove that at a recent period on the part of the British Government through its public minister here, a secret agent of that government was employed in certain states, more especially at the seat of government in Massachusetts, in fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the country ; and intrigued with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union, and forming the eastern part thereof into a political connexion with Great Britain.
In the war of 1812 the New England Federalists took sides with England, so far as this was possible without actually tak- ing up arms against the United States. At this time General Fessenden introduced the following resolution into the Massa- chusetts legislature :
And therefore be it resolved, that we recommend to his Excellency, Caleb Strong, to take the revenue of the State into his own hands, arm and equip the militia, and declare us independent of the Union.
About the same time Fisher Ames said: "Our country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too democratic for lib- erty. Our disease is democracy." And one of the leading Boston papers declared: "We never fought for a republic. The form of our government was the result of necessity, not the off-
