Few gaps in the parliamentary history of the Union left so serious a want as was caused by the failure to report the Senate debate on this Bill; but the report of the House debate partly supplied the loss, for the Bill became there a target for attack from every quarter. Michael Leib, one of the extreme Pennsylvania democrats, began by objecting to the power given to the governor over the Louisiana legislature as “royal.” His colleague, Andrew Gregg, objected altogether to the appointment of the council by the President. Varnum of Massachusetts denounced the whole system, and demanded an elective legislature. Matthew Lyon, who represented Kentucky, compared Jefferson to Bonaparte. “Do we not owe something on this score to principle?” he asked. Speaker Macon took the same ground. George W. Campbell of Tennessee was more precise. “It really establishes a complete despotism,” he said; “it does not evince a single trait of liberty; it does not confer one single right to which they are entitled under the treaty; it does not extend to them the benefits of the Federal Constitution, or declare when, hereafter, they shall receive them.” On the other hand Dr. Eustis, of Boston, took the ground that a despotism was necessary: “I am one of those who believe that the principles of civil liberty cannot suddenly be engrafted on a people accustomed to a regimen of a directly opposite hue.” In contradiction to the language of the treaty and the principles of his party, he went on to say that the people of Louisiana had no rights: “I consider them as standing in nearly the same relation to us as if they were a conquered country.” Other speakers supported him. The Louisianians, it was said, had shed tears when they saw the American flag hoisted in place of the French; they were not prepared for self-government. When the treaty was under discussion, the speakers assumed that the people of Louisiana were so eager for annexation as to make an appeal to them useless; when they were annexed, they were so degraded as not to be worth consulting. The House refused to tolerate such violation of principle, and by the majority of seventy-four to twenty-three struck out the section which vested legislative powers in the President’s nominees. John Randolph did not vote; but his friend Nicholson and the President’s son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, were in the minority. By fifty-eight to forty-two the House then adopted an amendment which vested legislative powers, after the first year, in an elective council; by forty-four to thirty-seven the restriction on jury trials was rejected; the Act was then limited to two years; and so altered it passed the House March 17, 1804, several Republicans recording their votes against it to the end.