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The Philadelphia GazMe, another prominent Opposition 
paper, adopted the same attitude, asserting in addition its 
belief that 
the true reason . . . why the House did not pass the bill was that 
it would have deprived the states on the Northern frontier of the colonial 
trade, which they now . . . are permitted to enjoy-^*^ 
“Never”, declared the New York Enquirer, “was a President 
more awkwardly situated, and all because of his private at- 
tachment to diplomacy.”^® 
On the other hand, the Norfolk Herald failed to see how the 
situation could be solely charged to the Executive, “when the 
whole subject was before Congress at the last session”. If 
there was any responsibility, it declared, it devolved upon 
Congress.®® The greater proportion of Administration papers, 
however, were not quite so broad in their condemnation. The 
Portsmouth Journal, for example, was very positive that 
the Senate will have to bear all the blame of the failure of the bill to 
regulate the colonial trade ... a majority of the Senate was ob- 
stinately resolved either not to legislate, or to pass a law which would 
have been a virtual abandonment of . . . fundamental principles. 
It will be difficult for the majority in the Senate, to satisfy the 
public that they were actuated by any just motives in this extraordinary 
conduct; — the only assignable motive is a determination on their part, 
to thwart and oppose the passage of all beneficial laws lest the admin- 
istration should receive credit of passing them, or to endeavor to throw 
upon the administration the odium of enforcing the most unpleasant 
but now necessary measures of retaliation.®^ 
This was likewise the view of the National Journal.^^ A Rhode 
Island paper accused the Senate of even trying to belittle the 
American Government before Great Britain. 
The object of the Senate was evidently not so much the interests 
of the country as the wish to embarrass the Executive, and, if possible, 
hold up the Cabinet to the contempt of the British Government, and of 
the people of the United States, by forcing a submission to dishonorable 
terms — an avowal, in fact that the British Government were right, and 
ours altogether in the wrong.®® 
Philadelphia Gazette, March 16, 1827. 
Quoted in Richmond Enquirer, March 13, 1827. 
Quoted in National Journal, June 21, 1827. 
Portsmouth Journal, March 10, 1827. 
National Journal, March 27, 1827. 
Rhode Island American and Providence Gazette, March 23, 1827. 
