explore the dangers that will attend its peace, and to avoid them if we can.

Few of us here, and fewer still in proportion of our constituents, will doubt, that, by rejecting, all those dangers will be aggravated.

The idea of war is treated as a bugbear. This levity is at least unseasonable, and most of all unbecoming some who resort to it.

Who has forgotten the philippics of 1794? The cry then was reparation-no envoy-no treaty-no tedious delays. Now, it seems, the passion subsides, or at least the hurry to satisfy it. Great Britain, say they, will not wage war upon us.

In 1794, it was urged by those, who now say, no war, that if we built frigates, or resisted the piracies of Algiers, we could not expect peace. Now they give excellent comfort truly. Great Britain has seized our vessels and cargoes to the amount of millions; she holds the posts; she interrupts our trade, say they, as a neutral nation; and these gentlemen, formerly so fierce for redress, assure us, in terms of the sweetest consolation, Great Britain will bear all this patiently. But let me ask the late champions of our rights, will our nation bear it? Let others exult because the aggressor will let our wrongs sleep forever. Will it add, it is my duty to ask, to the patience and quiet of our citizens to see their rights abandoned? Will not the disappointment of their hopes, so long patronized by the government, now in the crisis of their being realized, convert all their passions into fury and despair?

Are the posts to remain forever in the possession of Great Britain? Let those who reject them, when the treaty offers them to our hands, say, if they choose, they are of no importance. If they are, will they take them by force? The argument I am urging, would then come to a point. To use force is war. of treaty again is too absurd. Posts and redress must come from voluntary good will, treaty or war.

To talk

The conclusion is plain, if the state of peace shall continue, so will the British possession of the posts.

Look again at this state of things. On the seacoast, vast losses uncompensated: on the frontier, Indian war, actual encroachment on our territory: every where discontent-resentments tenfold more fierce because they will be impotent and humbled: national scorn and abasement.

The disputes of the old treaty of 1783, being left to rankle, will revive the almost extinguished animosities of that period. Wars, in all countries, and most of all in such as are free, arise from the impetuosity of the public feelings. The despotism of Turkey is of ten obliged by clamor, to unsheath the sword. War might perhaps be delayed, but could not be prevented. The causes of it would remain, would be aggravated, would be multiplied, and soon become intolerable. More captures, more impressments would swell the list of our wrongs, and the current of our rage. I make no calculation of the arts of those, whose employment it has been, on former occasions, to fan the fire. I say nothing of the foreign money and emissaries that might foment the spirit of hostility, because the state of things will naturally run to violence. With less than their former exertion, they would be successful. Will our government be able to temper and restrain the turbulence of such a crisis? The government, alas, will be in no capacity to govern. A divided people-and divided councils! Shall we cherish the spirit of peace or show the energies of war? we make our adversary afraid of our strength, or dispose him, by the measures of resentment and broken faith, to respect our rights? Do gentlemen rely on the state of peace because both nations will be worse disposed to keep it; because injuries, and insults still harder to endure, will be mutually offered?

Shall

Such a state of things will exist, if we should long avoid war, as will be worse than war. Peace without security, accumulation of injury without redress, or the hope of it, resentment against the aggressor, contempt for ourselves, intestine discord and anarchy.

Worse than this need not be apprehended, for if worse could happen, anarchy would bring it. Is this the peace, gentlemen undertake with such fearless confidence to maintain? Is this the station of American dignity, which the high-spirited champions of our national independence and honor could endure-nay, which they are anxious and almost violent to seize for the country? What is there in the treaty, that could humble us so low? Are they the men to swallow their resentments, who so lately were choaking with them. If in the case contemplated by them, it should be peace, I do not hesitate to declare it ought not to be peace.

Is there any thing in the prospect of the interior state of the country, to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How is this disorder in the machine to be rectified? While it exists, its movements must stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary interposition of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the constitution and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty are invulnerable and immortal-as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissensions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have no doubt better nerves and better discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and hap

py consequences of all this array of horrors. They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union or resources, in "the calm lights of mild philosophy." But whatever they may anticipate as the next measure of prudence and safety, they have explained nothing to the House. After rejecting the treaty, what is to be the next step? They must have foreseen what ought to be done, they have doubtless resolved what to propose. Why then are they silent? Dare they not avow their plan of conduct, or do they wait till our progress towards confusion shall guide them in forming it?

Let me cheer the mind, weary no doubt and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which it is yet in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance, without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved it? Will he not feel some dread, that a change of system will reverse the scene? The well grounded fears of our citizens in 1794, were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered, at that day, as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general desire of our people, was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our disputes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negociation after the end of the European war. This was gaining every thing, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining every thing. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentred in this one, that

we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and af forded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale, it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest and war.

if

Let us not hesitate then, to agree to the appropriation to carry it into faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprize, that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast, and peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proofs of their industry, as the instruments of their future success. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

I rose to speak under impressions, that I would have resisted if I could. Those who see me will believe, that the reduced state of my health has unfitted me, almost equally, for much exertion of body or mind. Unprepared for debate, by careful reflection in my retirement, or by long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent, was imposed by necessity, and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet when I come to the moment of deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I have spent in expostulation,