replied that so far as the Treasury knew, the House had no dignity to trifle with; but Gallatin never lost control of his temper or his tongue, and after having been the readiest and boldest adviser of his party he had become a master in the art of silence. He expressed once more his belief in the necessity of taxation;[379] but this done he let Congress go its own gait. Cheves aspired to abolish the remains of Jeffersonian statesmanship,--non-importations, embargoes, and restrictions,--and to restore the freedom of commerce; and in support of this scheme he obtained from Gallatin a letter dated Feb. 9, 1813,[380] expressing the decided opinion that Congress must not only impose war taxes, both external and internal, but must also repeal the non-importation, if the increased expenditures authorized by law were to be met. February 15 Cheves introduced a bill carrying out the secretary’s opinion so far as to suspend the Non-importation Act in part, though continuing it against articles specially enumerated. Two days afterward the House, by a vote of sixty-nine to forty-seven, instructed the Committee of Ways and Means to report tax-bills, although Cheves complained that the instruction was deceptive, and that no system of taxation could possibly be adopted within the fortnight that remained of the session. Apparently Cheves looked on the motion as a manœuvre to save the Non-importation Act; but he could hardly have been prepared to see the Federalist member, Elisha Potter of Rhode Island, rise, February 20, and declare that his constituents had invested a capital of four or five million dollars in manufactures protected by non-importation, and that Cheves’s bill, sacrificing as it did the interests of the manufacturing States, ought not to pass. Such a change of attitude foreshadowed a revolution. New England had her price. The system which Jefferson forced upon her at the cost of the Southern States had begun to work its intended effect. Under the pressure of Virginia legislation, New England was abandoning commerce and creating manufactures. While every Federalist newspaper in the country denounced the restrictive system without ceasing, nearly every Federalist in the House voted with Potter in its favor. By seventy-nine votes to twenty-four, the Committee of the Whole struck out Cheves’s proposed relaxation, and converted his bill into a measure for the stricter enforcement of non-importation. Cheves and Lowndes were then obliged to vote against their own bill, so amended, in a minority of forty-five to sixty-seven.