To anxiety in connection with his private affairs was added a certain degree of embarrassment arising from his political situation as representative of a district which was not his residence, and to which he was almost a total stranger. It is an extraordinary proof of his importance to his party that he should have been three times re-elected to Congress over all local opposition. This year he went so far as to decline a re-election, and in June sent early notice of his intention to Judge Brackenridge, in order that he might take advantage of it if he chose; but Mr. Brackenridge absolutely rejected all idea of coming forward, and united with others in urging Mr. Gallatin to remain. No steps were taken to provide a new candidate, and when, late in September, a letter was at last received from Mr. Gallatin containing the bare consent to serve if re-elected, the season was already so far advanced that a new candidate could hardly have been put in the field. In spite of his private interests and of what was more important still, the wishes of his wife, who was cruelly situated during these long separations, Mr. Gallatin was in a manner compelled to remain in public life. Beyond a doubt all his true interests lay there, and he knew it, yet these complications, resulting from the theories of his boyhood and their conflict with all the facts of his character, continued to embarrass his situation during his whole public career. A few weeks at New Geneva were all the vacation he could obtain, and these in the turmoil of an election. The war fever against France had been employed by the Federalists to strengthen the hands of government, and no one now denies that the Federalists carried this process too far; the alien and sedition laws were unwise; the greatest of all the Federalists, next to Washington, John Marshall, of Virginia, did not hesitate to avow this opinion at the time, though at the risk of being ruled out of the party by his New England allies; but a more curious example of Federalist temper is furnished by the constitutional amendment proposed by Massachusetts: COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. In the House of Representatives, June 28, 1798. ... It is the wish and opinion of this Legislature that any amendment which may be agreed upon should exclude at all events from a seat in either branch of Congress any person who shall not have been actually naturalized at the time of making this amendment, and have been admitted a citizen of the United States fourteen years at least at the time of such election. * * * * *