On July 5 a resolution was moved to appoint a committee to consider the expediency of declaring, by legislative act, the state of relations between the United States and the French Republic. Mr. Gallatin asked if a declaration of war could not be moved as an amendment, but the speaker, Mr. Dayton, made no reply. Mr. Gallatin objected that Congress could not declare a state of facts by a legislative act. But this view, if tenable then, has long since been abandoned. In witness of which it is only necessary to name the celebrated resolution of the Congress of 1865 with regard to the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico. July 6 the House went into committee of the whole on the state of the Union to consider a bill sent down by the Senate abrogating the treaty with France. The bill was passed on the 16th by a vote of 47 ayes to 37 nays, Gallatin voting in the negative. The House adjourned the same day. While thus engaged in debates which called into exercise his varied information and displayed not only the extent of his learning but his remarkable powers of reasoning and statement, Mr. Gallatin never lost sight of reform in the administration of the finances of the government. To the success of his efforts to hold the Treasury Department to a strict conformity with his theory of administration, Mr. Wolcott, the secretary, gave ample if unwilling testimony. To Hamilton he wrote on April 5, 1798, "The management of the Treasury becomes more and more difficult. The legislature will not pass laws in gross; their appropriations are minute. Gallatin, to whom they yield, is evidently intending to break down this department by charging it with an impracticable detail." During these warm discussions Gallatin rarely lost his self-control. Writing to his old friend Lesdernier at this period, he said, "You may remember I am blessed with a very even temper; it has not been altered by time or politics." * * * * * The third session of the fifth Congress opened on December 3, 1798. On the 8th, when the President was expected, Lieutenant-General Washington and Generals Pinckney and Hamilton entered the hall and took their places on the right of the speaker's chair. They had been recently appointed to command the army of defense. The President's speech announced no change in the situation. "Nothing," he said, "is discoverable in the conduct of France which ought to change or relax our measures for defense. On the contrary, to extend and invigorate them is our true policy. An efficient preparation for war can alone insure peace. It must be left to France, if she is indeed desirous of accommodation, to take the requisite steps. The United States will steadily observe the maxims by which they have hitherto been governed." The reply to this patriotic sentiment was unanimously agreed to, and was most grateful to Adams, who thanked the House for it as "consonant to the characters of representatives of a great and free people."