additional; the interest payments incidental to the final settlement raising the total eventually to $27,267,622, or about four cents an acre. Different writers have emphasized differently the various factors in this extraordinary diplomatic episode. Unquestionably the western people were ready to war for the navigation of the Mississippi; but, that being guaranteed, it seems certain that France might peaceably have taken and held the western shore. The acquisition was not a triumph of American diplomacy, but a piece of marvellous diplomatic good fortune; for the records abundantly prove, as Madison said, that the cause of success was a sudden policy of Napoleon, forced by European contingencies. Livingston alone of the public men concerned showed indubitably before the event a conception of the feasibility and desirability of the acquisition of a vast territory beyond the Mississippi. Jefferson had wished to buy the Floridas, but alarmed by the magnitude of the cession, declared his belief that the United States had no power to acquire Louisiana. Though such strict construction of the constitution was a cardinal dogma of the Democratic party, this dogma was abandoned outright in practice, Jefferson finding "but one opinion as to the necessity of shutting up the constitution" (or amending it, which was not done) and seeking justification of the means in the end. The Federalist party, heretofore broad-constructionists, became strict-constructionists under the temptation of factious politics, and a very notable political struggle was thus precipitated--notable among other things for strong expressions of sectionalism. The net result was the establishment of the doctrine of "implied powers" in interpreting the constitution; a doctrine under which the Supreme Court presently found power to acquire territory implied in the powers to wage war and make peace, negotiate treaties, and "dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States."