President Adams never found a dangerous alien friend to send out of the country. The war with France was averted and the Alien Enemies act consequently never enforced. Some new issue arose to attract popular attention. The war fever passed as quickly as it came. Only the extra taxes remained to remind the people that the French-war scare of 1798 had ever occurred. War measures are always popular at the time they are passed. National patriotism is aroused, excitement refuses to listen to conservatism, and judgment is replaced by impulse. Measures necessary to raise the extra revenue are easily voted; but after the excitement has passed, the extra taxes become an extra burden. Those who yesterday clamoured most loudly for national defence and "patriotic" measures will to-morrow seek to evade payment or turn and rend the party which imposed the levies. The war is soon over; the train of taxes which follows seems endless. A political party takes small risk in fathering a war; it faces a great danger in the reaction which follows. The Federalists had not only authorised by their war measures a large addition to the national debt, but had imposed certain forms of direct taxes. Even more odious than either the stamp tax or the tax on slaves was that on "improvements" in property. In order to arrive at a fair conclusion of the value of dwellings, the number of windows in each was taken as a standard by the assessors. This method was not unknown to the Old World, but proved extremely obnoxious in the New. Resistance in eastern Pennsylvania took the form of the so-called '"Fries Insurrection." It offered another opportunity to the National Government to assert its authority, but rendered President Adams still more unpopular, and increased public hostility toward the Federalists. Although Adams pardoned the leader, John Fries, he did not appease the Republicans, and he angered the Hamiltonians, who would show no clemency toward the opponents of law and order. Like some mastodon of old, the party floundered deeper into the swamp, eventually to succumb, leaving only its bones as a warning to the danger of overconfidence. CHAPTER XIII THE FIRST STATE PROTESTS