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Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty
Chapter VIII. The Pacifists of 1807
by Johnson, Allen
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It is one of the strange paradoxes of our time that the author of
the Declaration of Independence, to whose principle of
self-determination the world seems again to be turning, should
now be regarded as a self-confessed pacifist, with all the
derogatory implications that lurk in that epithet. The
circumstances which made him a revolutionist in 1776 and a
passionate advocate of peace in 1807 deserve some consideration.
The charge made by contemporaries of Jefferson that his aversion
to war sprang from personal cowardice may be dismissed at once,
as it was by him, with contempt. Nor was his hatred of war merely
an instinctive abhorrence of bloodshed. He had not hesitated to
wage naval war on the Barbary Corsairs. It is true that he was
temperamentally averse to the use of force under ordinary
circumstances. He did not belong to that type of full-blooded men
who find self-expression in adventurous activity. Mere physical
effort without conscious purpose never appealed to him. He was at
the opposite pole of life from a man like Aaron Burr. He never,
so far as history records, had an affair of honor; he never
fought a duel; he never performed active military service; he
never took human life. Yet he was not a non-resistant. "My hope
of preserving peace for our country," he wrote on one occasion,
"is not founded in the Quaker principle of nonresistance under
every wrong."
The true sources of Jefferson's pacifism must be sought in his
rationalistic philosophy, which accorded the widest scope to the
principle of self-direction and self determination, whether on
the part of the individual or of groups of individuals. To impose
one's will upon another was to enslave, according to his notion;
to coerce by war was to enslave a community; and to enslave a
community was to provoke revolution. Jefferson's thought
gravitated inevitably to the center of his rational universe--to
the principle of enlightened self-interest. Men and women are not
to be permanently moved by force but by appeals to their
interests. He completed his thought as follows in the letter
already quoted: "But [my hope of preserving peace is founded] in
the belief that a just and friendly conduct on our part will
procure justice and friendship from others. In the existing
contest, each of the combatants will find an interest in our
friendship."
It was a chaotic world in which this philosopher-statesman was
called upon to act--a world in which international law and
neutral rights had been well-nigh submerged in twelve years of
almost continuous war. Yet with amazing self-assurance President
Jefferson believed that he held in his hand a master-key which
would unlock all doors that had been shut to the commerce of
neutrals. He called this master-key "peaceable coercion," and he
explained its magic potency in this wise:
"Our commerce is so valuable to them [the European belligerents]
that they will be glad to purchase it when the only price we ask
is to do us justice. I believe that we have in our hands the
means of peaceable coercion; and that the moment they see our
government so united as that they can make use of it, they will
for their own interest be disposed to do us justice."
The idea of using commercial restrictions as a weapon to secure
recognition of rights was of course not original with Jefferson,
but it was now to be given a trial without parallel in the
history of the nation. Non-importation agreements had proved
efficacious in the struggle of the colonies with the mother
country; it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that a
well-sustained refusal to traffic in English goods would meet the
emergency of 1807, when the ruling of British admiralty courts
threatened to cut off the lucrative commerce between Europe and
the West Indies. With this theory in view, the President and his
Secretary of State advocated the NonImportation Bill of April 18,
1806, which forbade the entry of certain specified goods of
British manufacture. The opposition found a leader in Randolph,
who now broke once and for all with the Administration. "Never in
the course of my life," he exclaimed, "have I witnessed such a
scene of indignity and inefficiency as this measure holds forth
to the world. What is it? A milk-and-water bill! A dose of
chicken-broth to be taken nine months hence! . . . It is too
contemptible to be the object of consideration, or to excite the
feelings of the pettiest state in Europe." The Administration
carried the bill through Congress, but Randolph had the
satisfaction of seeing his characterisation of the measure amply
justified by the course of events.
With the Non-Importation Act as a weapon, the President was
confident that Monroe, who had once more returned to his post in
London, could force a settlement of all outstanding differences
with Great Britain. To his annoyance, and to Monroe's chagrin,
however, he was obliged to send a special envoy to act with
Monroe. Factious opposition in the Senate forced the President to
placate the Federalists by appointing William Pinkney of
Maryland. The American commissioners were instructed to insist
upon three concessions in the treaty which they were to
negotiate: restoration of trade with enemies' colonies, indemnity
for captures made since the Essex decision, and express
repudiation of the right of impressment. In return for these
concessions, they might hold out the possible repeal of the
Non-Importation Act! Only confirmed optimists could believe that
the mistress of the seas, flushed with the victory of Trafalgar,
would consent to yield these points for so slight a compensation.
The mission was, indeed, doomed from the outset, and nothing more
need be said of it than that in the end, to secure any treaty at
all, Monroe and Pinkney broke their instructions and set aside
the three ultimata. What they obtained in return seemed so
insignificant and doubtful, and what they paid for even these
slender compensations seemed so exorbitant, that the President
would not even submit the treaty to the Senate. The first
application of the theory of peaceable coercion thus ended in
humiliating failure. Jefferson thought it best "to let the
negotiation take a friendly nap"; but Madison, who felt that his
political future depended on a diplomatic triumph over England,
drafted new instructions for the two commissioners, hoping that
the treaty might yet be put into acceptable form. It was while
these new instructions were crossing the ocean that the
Chesapeake struck her colors.
James Monroe is one of the most unlucky diplomats in American
history. From those early days when he had received the fraternal
embraces of the Jacobins in Paris and had been recalled by
President Washington, to the ill-fated Spanish mission,
circumstances seem to have conspired against him. The honor of
negotiating the purchase of Louisiana should have been his alone,
but he arrived just a day too late and was obliged to divide the
glory with Livingston. On this mission to England he was not
permitted to conduct negotiations alone but was associated with
William Pinkney, a Federalist. No wonder he suspected Madison, or
at least Madison's friends, of wishing to discredit him. And now
another impossible task was laid upon him. He was instructed to
demand not only disavowal. and reparation for the attack on the
Chesapeake and the restoration of the American seamen, but also
as "an indispensable part of the satisfaction" "an entire
abolition of impressments." If the Secretary of State had
deliberately contrived to deliver Monroe into the hands of George
Canning, he could not have been more successful, for Monroe had
already protested against the Chesapeake outrage as an act of
aggression which should be promptly disavowed without reference
to the larger question of impressment. He was now obliged to eat
his own words and inject into the discussion, as Canning put it,
the irrelevant matters which they had agreed to separate from the
present controversy. Canning was quick to see his opportunity.
Mr. Monroe must be aware, said he, that on several recent
occasions His Majesty had firmly declined to waive "the ancient
and prescriptive usages of Great Britain, founded on the soundest
principles of natural law," simply because they might come in
contact with the interests or the feelings of the American
people. If Mr. Monroe's instructions left him powerless to adjust
this regrettable incident of the Leopard and the Chesapeake,
without raising the other question of the right of search and
impressment, then His Majesty could only send a special envoy to
the United States to terminate the controversy in a manner
satisfactory to both countries. "But," added Canning with sarcasm
which was not lost on Monroe, "in order to avoid the
inconvenience which has arisen from the mixed nature of your
instructions, that minister will not be empowered to entertain .
. . any proposition respecting the search of merchant vessels."
One more humiliating experience was reserved for Monroe before
his diplomatic career closed. Following Madison's new set of
instructions, he and Pinkney attempted to reopen negotiations for
the revision of the discredited treaty of the preceding year. But
Canning had reasons of his own for wishing to be rid of a treaty
which had been drawn by the late Whig Ministry. He informed the
American commissioners arrogantly that "the proposal of the
President of the United States for proceeding to negotiate anew
upon the basis of a treaty already solemnly concluded and signed,
is a proposal wholly inadmissible." His Majesty could therefore
only acquiesce in the refusal of the President to ratify the
treaty. One week later, James Monroe departed from London, never
again to set foot on British soil, leaving Pinkney to assume the
duties of Minister at the Court of St. James. For the second time
Monroe returned to his own country discredited by the President
who had appointed him. In both instances he felt himself the
victim of injustice. In spite of his friendship for Jefferson, he
was embittered against the Administration and in this mood lent
himself all too readily to the schemes of John Randolph, who had
already picked him as the one candidate who could beat Madison in
the next presidential election.
>From the point of view of George Canning and the Tory
squirearchy
whose mouthpiece he was, the Chesapeake affair was but an
incident--an unhappy incident, to be sure, but still only an
incident--in the world-wide struggle with Napoleon. What was at
stake was nothing less than the commercial supremacy of Great
Britain. The astounding growth of Napoleon's empire was a
standing menace to British trade. The overthrow of Prussia in the
fall of 1806 left the Corsican in control of Central Europe and
in a position to deal his long premeditated blow. A fortnight
after the battle of Jena, he entered Berlin and there issued the
famous decree which was his answer to the British blockade of the
French channel ports. Since England does not recognize the system
of international law universally observed by all civilized
nations--so the preamble read--but by a monstrous abuse of the
right of blockade has determined to destroy neutral trade and to
raise her commerce and industry upon the ruins of that of the
continent, and since "whoever deals on the continent in English
goods thereby favors and renders himself an accomplice of her
designs," therefore the British Isles are declared to be in a
state of blockade. Henceforth all English goods were to be lawful
prize in any territory held by the troops of France or her
allies; and all vessels which had come from English ports or from
English colonies were to be confiscated, together with their
cargoes. This challenge was too much for the moral equilibrium of
the squires, the shipowners, and the merchants who dominated
Parliament. It dulled their sense of justice and made them
impatient under the pinpricks which came from the United States.
"A few short months of war," declared the Morning Post
truculently, "would convince these desperate [American]
politicians of the folly of measuring the strength of a rising,
but still infant and puny, nation with the colossal power of the
British Empire." "Right," said the Times, another organ of the
Tory Government, "is power sanctioned by usage." Concession to
Americans at this crisis was not to be entertained for a moment,
for after all, said the Times, they "possess all the vices of
their Indian neighbors without their virtues."
In this temper the British Government was prepared to ignore the
United States and deal Napoleon blow for blow. An
order-in-council of January 7, 1807, asserted the right of
retaliation and declared that "no vessel shall be permitted to
trade from one port to another, both which ports shall belong to,
or be in possession of France or her allies." The peculiar
hardship of this order for American shipowners is revealed by the
papers of Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose shrewdness and
enterprise were making him one of the merchant princes of his
time. One of his ships, the Liberty, of some 250 tons, was sent
to Lisbon with a cargo of 2052 barrels and 220 half-barrels of
flour which cost the owner $10.68 a barrel. Her captain, on
entering port, learned that flour commanded a better price at
Cadiz. To Cadiz, accordingly, he set sail and sold his cargo for
$22.50 a barrel, winning for the owner a goodly profit of
$25,000, less commission. It was such trading ventures as this
that the British order-in-council doomed.
What American shipmasters had now to fear from both belligerents
was made startlingly clear by the fate of the ship Horizon, which
had sailed from Charleston, South Carolina, with a cargo for
Zanzibar. On the way she touched at various South American ports
and disposed of most of her cargo. Then changing her destination,
and taking on a cargo for the English market, she set sail for
London. On the way she was forced to put in at Lisbon to refit.
As she left to resume her voyage she was seized by an English
frigate and brought in as a fair prize, since --according to the
Rule of 1756--she had been apprehended in an illegal traffic
between an enemy country and its colony. The British prize court
condemned the cargo but released the ship. The unlucky Horizon
then loaded with an English cargo and sailed again to Lisbon, but
misfortune overtook her and she was wrecked off the French coast.
Her cargo was salvaged, however, and what was not of English
origin was restored to her owners by decree of a French prize
court; the rest of her cargo was confiscated under the terms of
the Berlin decree. When the American Minister protested at this
decision, he was told that "since America suffers her ships to be
searched, she adopts the principle that the flag does not cover
the goods. Since she recognizes the absurd blockades laid by
England, consents to having her vessels incessantly stopped, sent
to England, and so turned aside from their course, why should the
Americans not suffer the blockade laid by France? Certainly
France recognizes that these measures are unjust, illegal, and
subversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of nations
to resort to force, and to declare themselves against things
which dishonor them and disgrace their independence."[*] But an
invitation to enter the European maelstrom and battle for neutral
rights made no impression upon the mild-tempered President.
[* Henry Adams, History of the United States, IV, p. 110.]
It is as clear as day that the British Government was now
determined, under pretense of retaliating upon France, to promote
British trade with the continent by every means and at the
expense of neutrals. Another order-in-council, November 17, 1807,
closed to neutrals all European ports under French control, "as
if the same were actually blockaded," but permitted vessels which
first entered a British port and obtained a British license to
sail to any continental port. It was an order which, as Henry
Adams has said, could have but one purpose--to make American
commerce English. This was precisely the contemporary opinion of
the historian's grandfather, who declared that the
"orders-in-council, if submitted to, would have degraded us to
the condition of colonists."
Only one more blow was needed, it would seem, to complete the
ruin of American commerce. It fell a month later, when Napoleon,
having overrun the Spanish peninsula and occupied Portugal,
issued his Milan decree of December 17, 1807. Henceforth any
vessel which submitted to search by English cruisers, or paid any
tonnage duty or tax to the English Government, or sailed to or
from any English port, would be captured and condemned as lawful
prize. Such was to be the maritime code of France "until England
should return to the principles of international law which are
also those of justice and honor."
Never was a commercial nation less prepared to defend itself
against depredations than the United States of America in this
year 1807. For this unpreparedness many must bear the blame, but
President Jefferson has become the scapegoat. This Virginia
farmer and landsman was not only ignorant and distrustful of all
the implements of war, but utterly unfamiliar with the ways of
the sea and with the first principles of sea-power. The
Tripolitan War seems to have inspired him with a single fixed
idea--that for defensive purposes gunboats were superior to
frigates and less costly. He set forth this idea in a special
message to Congress (February 10, 1807), claiming to have the
support of "professional men," among whom he mentioned Generals
Wilkinson and Gates! He proposed the construction of two hundred
of these gunboats, which would be distributed among the various
exposed harbors, where in time of peace they would be hauled up
on shore under sheds, for protection against sun and storm. As
emergency arose these floating batteries were to be manned by the
seamen and militia of the port. What appealed particularly to the
President in this programme was the immunity it offered from "an
excitement to engage in offensive maritime war." Gallatin would
have modified even this plan for economy's sake. He would have
constructed only one-half of the proposed fleet since the large
seaports could probably build thirty gunboats in as many days, if
an emergency arose. In extenuation of Gallatin's
shortsightedness, it should be remembered that he was a native of
Switzerland, whose navy has never ploughed many seas. It is less
easy to excuse the rest of the President's advisers and the
Congress which was beguiled into accepting this naive project.
Nor did the Chesapeake outrage teach either Congress or the
Administration a salutary lesson. On the contrary, when in
October the news of the bombardment of Copenhagen had shattered
the nerves of statesmen in all neutral countries, and while the
differences with England were still unsettled, Jefferson and his
colleagues decided to hold four of the best frigates in port and
use them "as receptacles for enlisting seamen to fill the
gunboats occasionally." Whom the gods would punish they first
make mad!
The 17th of December was a memorable day in the annals of this
Administration. Favorable tradewinds had brought into American
ports a number of packets with news from Europe. The Revenge had
arrived in New York with Armstrong's dispatches announcing
Napoleon's purpose to enforce the Berlin decree; the Edward had
reached Boston with British newspapers forecasting the
order-in-council of the 11th of November. This news burst like a
bomb in Washington where the genial President was observing with
scientific detachment the operation of his policy of commercial
coercion. The Non-Importation Act had just gone into effect.
Jefferson immediately called his Cabinet together. All were of
one mind. The impending order-in-council, it was agreed, left but
one alternative. Commerce must be totally suspended until the
full scope of these new aggressions could be ascertained. The
President took a loose sheet of paper and drafted hastily a
message to Congress, recommending an embargo in anticipation of
the offensive British order. But the prudent Madison urged that
it was better not to refer explicitly to the order and proposed a
substitute which simply recommended "an immediate inhibition of
the departure of our vessels from the ports of the United
States," on the ground that shipping was likely to be exposed to
greater dangers. Only Gallatin demurred: he would have preferred
an embargo for a limited time. "I prefer war to a permanent
embargo," he wrote next day. "Government prohibitions," he added
significantly, "do always more mischief than had been
calculated." But Gallatin was overruled and the message, in
Madison's form, was sent to Congress on the following day. The
Senate immediately passed the desired bill through three readings
in a single day; the House confirmed this action after only two
days of debate; and on the 22d of December, the President signed
the Embargo Act.
What was this measure which was passed by Congress almost without
discussion? Ostensibly it was an act for the protection of
American ships, merchandise, and seamen. It forbade the departure
of all ships for foreign ports, except vessels under the
immediate direction of the President and vessels in ballast or
already loaded with goods. Foreign armed vessels were exempted
also as a matter of course. Coasting ships were to give bonds
double the value of vessel and cargo to reland their freight in
some port of the United States. Historians have discovered a
degree of duplicity in the alleged motives for this act. How, it
is asked, could protection of ships and seamen be the motive when
all of Jefferson's private letters disclose his determination to
put his theory of peaceable coercion to a practical test by this
measure? The criticism is not altogether fair, for, as Jefferson
would himself have replied, peaceable coercion was designed to
force the withdrawal of orders-in-council and decrees that
menaced the safety of ships and cargoes. The policy might entail
some incidental hardships, to be sure, but the end in view was
protection of American lives and property. Madison was not quite
candid, nevertheless, when he assured the British Minister that
the embargo was a precautionary measure only and not conceived
with hostile intent.
Chimerical this policy seemed to many contemporaries; chimerical
it has seemed to historians, and to us who have passed through
the World War. Yet in the World War it was the possession of food
stuffs and raw materials by the United States which gave her a
dominating position in the councils of the Allies. Had her
commerce in 1807 been as necessary to England and France as it
was "at the very peak" of the World War, Thomas Jefferson might
have proved that peaceable coercion is an effective alternative
to war; but he overestimated the magnitude and importance of the
carrying trade of the United States, and erred still more
grievously in assuming that a public conscience existed which
would prove superior to the temptation to evade the law.
Jefferson dreaded war quite as much because of its concomitants
as because of its inevitable brutality, quite as much because it
tended to exalt government and to produce corruption as because
it maimed bodies and sacrificed human lives. Yet he never took
fully into account the possible accompaniments of his alternative
to war. That the embargo would debauch public morals and make
government arbitrary, he was to learn only by bitter experience
and personal humiliation.
Just after the passage of this momentous act, Canning's special
envoy, George Rose, arrived in the United States. A British
diplomat of the better sort, with much dignity of manner and
suave courtesy, he was received with more than ordinary
consideration by the Administration. He was commissioned, every
one supposed, to offer reparation for the Chesapeake affair. Even
after he had notified Madison that his instructions bade him
insist, as an indispensable preliminary, on the recall of the
President's Chesapeake proclamation, he was treated with
deference and assured that the President was prepared to comply,
if he could do so without incurring the charge of inconsistency
and disregard of national honor. Madison proposed to put a
proclamation of recall in Rose's hands, duly signed by the
President and dated so as to correspond with the day on which all
differences should be adjusted. Rose consented to this course and
the proclamation was delivered into his hands. He then divulged
little by little his further instructions, which were such as no
self-respecting administration could listen to with composure.
Canning demanded a formal disavowal of Commodore Barron's conduct
in encouraging deserters from His Majesty's service and harboring
them on board his ship. "You will state," read Rose's
instructions, "that such disavowals, solemnly expressed, would
afford to His Majesty a satisfactory pledge on the part of the
American Government that the recurrence of similar causes will
not on any occasion impose on His Majesty the necessity of
authorizing those means of force to which Admiral Berkeley has
resorted without authority, but which the continued repetition of
such provocations as unfortunately led to the attack upon the
Chesapeake might render necessary, as a just reprisal on the part
of His Majesty." No doubt Rose did his best to soften the tone of
these instructions, but he could not fail to make them clear; and
Madison, who had conducted these informal interviews, slowly
awoke to the real nature of what he was asked to do. He closed
further negotiations with the comment that the United States
could not be expected "to make, as it were, an expiatory
sacrifice to obtain redress, or beg for reparation." The
Administration determined to let the disavowal of Berkeley
suffice for the present and to allow the matter of reparation to
await further developments. The coercive policy on which the
Administration had now launched would, it was confidently
believed, bring His Majesty's Government to terms.
The very suggestion of an embargo had an unexpected effect upon
American shipmasters. To avoid being shut up in port, fleets of
ships put out to sea half-manned, half-laden, and often without
clearance papers. With freight rates soaring to unheard-of
altitudes, ship-owners were willing to assume all the risks of
the sea--British frigates included. So little did they appreciate
the protection offered by a benevolent government that they
assumed an attitude of hostility to authority and evaded the
exactions of the law in every conceivable way. Under guise of
engaging in the coasting trade, many a ship landed her cargo in a
foreign port; a brisk traffic also sprang up across the Canadian
border; and Amelia Island in St. Mary's River, Florida, became a
notorious mart for illicit commerce. Almost at once Congress was
forced to pass supplementary acts, conferring upon collectors of
ports powers of inspection and regulation which Gallatin
unhesitatingly pronounced both odious and dangerous. The
President affixed his signature ruefully to acts which increased
the army, multiplied the number of gunboats under construction,
and appropriated a million and a quarter dollars to the
construction of coast defenses and the equipment of militia.
"This embargo act," he confessed, "is certainly the most
embarrassing we ever had to execute. I did not expect a crop of
so sudden and rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force
could have grown up in the United States."
The worst feature of the experiment was its ineffectiveness. The
inhibition of commerce had so slight an effect upon England that
when Pinkney approached Canning with the proposal of a quid pro
quo-- the United States to rescind the embargo, England to revoke
her orders-in-council--he was told with biting sarcasm that "if
it were possible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the
embargo without appearing to deprecate it as a measure of
hostility, he would gladly have facilitated its removal "as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people." By
licensing American vessels, indeed, which had either slipped out
of port before the embargo or evaded the collectors, the British
Government was even profiting by this measure of restriction. It
was these vagrant vessels which gave Napoleon his excuse for the
Bayonne decree of April 17, 1808, when with a stroke of the pen
he ordered the seizure of all American ships in French ports and
swept property to the value of ten million dollars into the
imperial exchequer. Since these vessels were abroad in violation
of the embargo, he argued, they could not be American craft but
must be British ships in disguise. General Armstrong, writing
from Paris, warned the Secretary of State not to expect that the
embargo would do more than keep the United States at peace with
the belligerents. As a coercive measure, its effect was nil.
"Here it is not felt, and in England . . . it is forgotten."
Before the end of the year the failure of the embargo was patent
to every fair-minded observer. Men might differ ever so much as
to the harm wrought by the embargo abroad; but all agreed that it
was not bringing either France or England to terms, and that it
was working real hardship at home. Federalists in New England,
where nearly one-third of the ships in the carrying trade were
owned, pointed to the schooners "rotting at their wharves," to
the empty shipyards and warehouses, to the idle sailors wandering
in the streets of port towns, and asked passionately how long
they must be sacrificed to the theories of this charlatan in the
White House. Even Southern Republicans were asking uneasily when
the President would realize that the embargo was ruining planters
who could not market their cotton and tobacco. And Republicans
whose pockets were not touched were soberly questioning whether a
policy that reduced the annual value of exports from $108,000,000
to $22,000,000, and cut the national revenue in half, had not
been tested long enough.
Indications multiplied that "the dictatorship of Mr. Jefferson"
was drawing to a close. In 1808, after the election of Madison as
his successor, he practically abdicated as leader of his party,
partly out of an honest conviction that he ought not to commit
the President-elect by any positive course of action, and partly
no doubt out of a less praiseworthy desire not to admit the
defeat of his cherished principle. His abdication left the party
without resolute leadership at a critical moment. Madison and
Gallatin tried to persuade their party associates to continue the
embargo until June, and then, if concessions were not
forthcoming, to declare war; but they were powerless to hold the
Republican majority together on this programme. Setting aside the
embargo and returning to the earlier policy of non-intercourse,
Congress adopted a measure which excluded all English and French
vessels and imports, but which authorized the President to renew
trade with either country if it should mend its ways. On March 1,
1809, with much bitterness of spirit, Thomas Jefferson signed the
bill which ended his great experiment. Martha Jefferson once
said of her father that he never gave up a friend or an opinion.
A few months before his death, he alluded to the embargo, with
the pathetic insistence of old age, as "a measure, which,
persevered in a little longer . . . would have effected its
object completely."
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