I entertain the hope, perhaps a rash one, that my strength will hold
me out to speak a few minutes.
In my judgment, a right decision will depend more on the temper and
manner with which we may prevail upon ourselves to contemplate the
subject than upon the development of any profound political
principles, or any remarkable skill in the application of them. If
we could succeed to neutralize our inclinations, we should find less
difficulty than we have to apprehend in surmounting all our
objections.
The suggestion, a few days ago, that the House manifested symptoms
of heat and irritation, was made and retorted as if the charge ought
to create surprise, and would convey reproach. Let us be more just
to ourselves and to the occasion. Let us not affect to deny the
existence and the intrusion of some portion of prejudice and feeling
into the debate, when, from the very structure of our nature, we
ought to anticipate the circumstance as a probability, and when we
are admonished by the evidence of our senses that it is the fact.
How can we make professions for ourselves, and offer exhortations to
the House, that no influence should be felt but that of duty, and no
guide respected but that of the understanding, while the peal to
rally every passion of man is continually ringing in our ears?
Our understandings have been addressed, it is true, and with ability
and effect; but, I demand, has any corner of the heart been left
unexplored? It has been ransacked to find auxiliary arguments, and,
when that attempt failed, to awaken the sensibilities that would
require none. Every prejudice and feeling has been summoned to
listen to some peculiar style of address; and yet we seem to believe
and to consider as an affront a doubt that we are strangers to any
influence but that of unbiased reason.
It would be strange that a subject which has aroused in turn all the
passions of the country should be discussed without the interference
of any of our own. We are men, and, therefore, not exempt from those
passions; as citizens and representatives we feel the interests that
must excite them. The hazard of great interests cannot fail to
agitate strong passions. We are not disinterested; it is impossible
we should be dispassionate. The warmth of such feelings may becloud
the judgment, and, for a time, pervert the understanding. But the
public sensibility, and our own, has sharpened the spirit of
inquiry, and given an animation to the debate. The public attention
has been quickened to mark the progress of the discussion, and its
judgment, often hasty and erroneous on first impressions, has become
solid and enlightened at last. Our result will, I hope, on that
account, be the safer and more mature, as well as more accordant
with that of the nation. The only constant agents in political
affairs are the passions of men. Shall we complain of our nature--
shall we say that man ought to have been made otherwise? It is right
already, because he, from whom we derive our nature, ordained it so;
and because thus made and thus acting, the cause of truth and the
public good is the more surely promoted.
But an attempt has been made to produce an influence of a nature
more stubborn and more unfriendly to truth. It is very unfairly
pretended, that the constitutional right of this house is at stake,
and to be asserted and preserved only by a vote in the negative. We
hear it said that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance
against the design to nullify this assembly and to make it a cipher
in the government; that the President and Senate, the numerous
meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm of
the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion
and terror, to force the treaty down our throats, though we loathe
it, and in spite of the clearest convictions of duty and conscience.
It is necessary to pause here and inquire whether suggestions of
this kind be not unfair in their very texture and fabric, and
pernicious in all their influences. They oppose an obstacle in the
path of inquiry, not simply discouraging, but absolutely
insurmountable. They will not yield to argument; for as they were
not reasoned up, they cannot be reasoned down. They are higher than
a Chinese wall in truth's way, and built of materials that are
indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain
to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of
the men of knowledge of the world whether they would not hold him
for a blockhead that should hope to prevail in an argument whose
scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected
proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have
they not failed of success? The indignant heart repels a conviction
that is believed to debase it.
The self-love of an individual is not warmer in its sense, nor more
constant in its action, than what is called in French, _l'esprit_
_du_ _corps_, or the self-love of an assembly; that jealous
affection which a body of men is always found to bear towards its
own prerogatives and power. I will not condemn this passion. Why
should we urge an unmeaning censure or yield to groundless fears
that truth and duty will be abandoned, because men in a public
assembly are still men, and feel that _esprit_ _du_ _corps_ which is
one of the laws of their nature? Still less should we despond or
complain, if we reflect that this very spirit is a guardian instinct
that watches over the life of this assembly. It cherishes the
principle of self-preservation, and without its existence, and its
existence with all the strength we see it possess, the privileges of
the representatives of the people, and mediately the liberties of
the people, would not be guarded, as they are, with a vigilance that
never sleeps and an unrelaxed constancy and courage. If the
consequences, most unfairly attributed to the vote in the
affirmative, were not chimerical, and worse, for they are deceptive,
I should think it a reproach to be found even moderate in my zeal to
assert the constitutional powers of this assembly; and whenever they
shall be in real danger, the present occasion affords proof that
there will be no want of advocates and champions.
Indeed, so prompt are these feelings, and, when once roused, so
difficult to pacify, that if we could prove the alarm was
groundless, the prejudice against the appropriations may remain on
the mind, and it may even pass for an act of prudence and duty to
negative a measure which was lately believed by ourselves, and may
hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of
the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation
on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as
wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is
possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest
suspicion of an assault.
While these prepossessions remain, all argument is useless. It may
be heard with the ceremony of attention, and lavish its own
resources, and the patience it wearies, to no manner of purpose. The
ears may be open; but the mind will remain locked up, and every pass
to the understanding guarded.
Unless, therefore, this jealous and repulsive fear for the rights of
the House can be allayed, I will not ask a hearing.
I cannot press this topic too far; I cannot address myself with too
much emphasis to the magnanimity and candor of those who sit here,
to suspect their own feelings, and, while they do, to examine the
grounds of their alarm. I repeat it, we must conquer our persuasion
that this body has an interest in one side of the question more than
the other, before we attempt to surmount our objections. On most
subjects, and solemn ones too, perhaps in the most solemn of all, we
form our creed more from inclination than evidence.
Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be only by way of
supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible they have
yielded too suddenly to their alarms for the powers of this House;
that the addresses which have been made with such variety of forms
and with so great dexterity in some of them, to all that is
prejudice and passion in the heart, are either the effects or the
instruments of artifice and deception, and then let them see the
subject once more in its singleness and simplicity.
It will be impossible, on taking a fair review of the subject, to
justify the passionate appeals that have been made to us to struggle
for our liberties and rights, and the solemn exhortations to reject
the proposition, said to be concealed in that on your table, to
surrender them forever. In spite of this mock solemnity, I demand,
if the House will not concur in the measure to execute the treaty,
what other course shall we take? How many ways of proceeding lie
open before us?
In the nature of things there are but three; we are either to make
the treaty, to observe it, or break it. It would be absurd to say
we will do neither. If I may repeat a phrase already much abused,
we are under coercion to do one of them; and we have no power, by
the exercise of our discretion, to prevent the consequences of a
choice.
By refusing to act, we choose. The treaty will be broken and fall to
the ground. Where is the fitness, then, of replying to those who
urge upon the House the topics of duty and policy that they attempt
to force the treaty down, and to compel this assembly to renounce
its discretion, and to degrade itself to the rank of a blind and
passive instrument in the hands of the treaty-making power? In case
we reject the appropriation, we do not secure any greater liberty of
action; we gain no safer shelter than before from the consequences
of the decision. Indeed, they are not to be evaded. It is neither
just nor manly to complain that the treaty-making power has produced
this coercion to act. It is not the act or the despotism of that
power--it is the nature of things that compels. Shall we, dreading
to become the blind instruments of power, yield ourselves the
blinder dupes of mere sounds of imposture? Yet that word, that empty
word, coercion, has given scope to an eloquence that, one would
imagine, could not be tired and did not choose to be quieted.
Let us examine still more in detail the alternatives that are before
us, and we shall scarcely fail to see, in still stronger lights, the
futility of our apprehensions for the power and liberty of the
House.
If, as some have suggested, the thing called a treaty is
incomplete,--if it has no binding force or obligation,--the first
question is, Will this House complete the instrument, and, by
concurring, impart to it that force which it wants?
The doctrine has been avowed that the treaty, though formally
ratified by the executive power of both nations, though published as
a law for our own by the President's proclamation, is still a mere
proposition submitted to this assembly, no way distinguishable, in
point of authority or obligation, from a motion for leave to bring
in a bill, or any other original act of ordinary legislation. This
doctrine, so novel in our country, yet so dear to many, precisely
for the reason that, in the contention for power, victory is always
dear, is obviously repugnant to the very terms as well as the fair
interpretation of our own resolutions (Mr. Blount's). We declare
that the treaty-making power is exclusively vested in the President
and Senate, and not in this House. Need I say that we fly in the
face of that resolution when we pretend that the acts of that power
are not valid until we have concurred in them? It would be
nonsense, or worse, to use the language of the most glaring
contradiction, and to claim a share in a power which we at the same
time disdain as exclusively vested in other departments.
What can be more strange than to say that the compacts of the
President and Senate with foreign nations are treaties, without our
agency, and yet those compacts want all power and obligation, until
they are sanctioned by our concurrence? It is not my design, in this
place, if at all, to go into the discussion of this part of the
subject. I will, at least for the present, take it for granted, that
this monstrous opinion stands in little need of remark, and if it
does, lies almost out of the reach of refutation.
But, say those who hide the absurdity under the cover of ambiguous
phrases, Have we no discretion? And if we have, are we not to make
use of it in judging of the expediency or inexpediency of the
treaty? Our resolution claims that privilege, and we cannot
surrender it without equal inconsistency and breach of duty.
If there be any inconsistency in the case, it lies, not in making
the appropriations for the treaty, but in the resolution itself
(Mr. Blount's). Let us examine it more nearly. A treaty is a bargain
between nations, binding in good faith; and what makes a bargain?
The assent of the contracting parties. We allow that the treaty
power is not in this House; this House has no share in contracting,
and is not a party; of consequence, the President and Senate alone
may make a treaty that is binding in good faith. We claim, however,
say the gentlemen, a right to judge of the expediency of treaties;
that is the constitutional province of our discretion. Be it
so. What follows? Treaties, when adjudged by us to be inexpedient,
fall to the ground, and the public faith is not hurt. This,
incredible and extravagant as it may seem, is asserted. The amount
of it, in plainer language, is this--the President and Senate are to
make national bargains, and this House has nothing to do in making
them. But bad bargains do not bind this House, and, of inevitable
consequence, do not bind the nation. When a national bargain, called
a treaty, is made, its binding force does not depend upon the
making, but upon our opinion that it is good. . . .
To expatiate on the value of public faith may pass with some men for
declamation--to such men I have nothing to say. To others I will
urge, Can any circumstance mark upon a people more turpitude and
debasement? Can anything tend more to make men think themselves
mean, or degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue and
their standard of action?
It would not merely demoralize mankind; it tends to break all the
ligaments of society, to dissolve that mysterious charm which
attracts individuals to the nation, and to inspire in its stead a
repulsive sense of shame and disgust.
What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a
man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this
ardent preference because they are greener? No, sir; this is not the
character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is
an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and
twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus
we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In
their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the
venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen makes
that honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, but as
sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense, and is
conscious that he gains protection while he gives it. For what
rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable when a State renounces
the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his life
should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be in a country
odious in the eyes of strangers and dishonored in his own? Could he
look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent?
The sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his
patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a
vice. He would be a banished man in his native land.
I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the
law of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period
when it is violated, there are none when it is decried. It is the
philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. It is observed
by barbarians--a whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads,
gives not merely binding force, but sanctity to treaties. Even in
Algiers a truce may be bought for money; but, when ratified, even
Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its
obligation. Thus, we see neither the ignorance of savages nor the
principles of an association for piracy and rapine, permit a nation
to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection
from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice could live
again, collect together and form a society, they would, however
loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that justice
under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They
would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and
they would therefore soon pay some respect themselves to the
obligations of good faith.
It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make even the
supposition, that America should furnish the occasion of this
opprobrium. No, let me not even imagine that a republican
government, sprung as our own is, from a people enlightened and
uncorrupted, a government whose origin is right, and whose daily
discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its option to be
faithless--can dare to act what despots dare not avow, what our
own example evinces, the states of Barbary are unsuspected of. No,
let me rather make the supposition that Great Britain refuses to
execute the treaty, after we have done everything to carry it into
effect. Is there any language of reproach pungent enough to express
your commentary on the fact? What would you say, or rather what
would you not say? Would you not tell them, wherever an Englishman
might travel, shame would stick to him--he would disown his country.
You would exclaim, England, proud of your wealth, and arrogant in
the possession of power--blush for these distinctions, which
become the vehicles of your dishonor. Such a nation might truly say
to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my
mother and my sister. We should say of such a race of men, their
name is a heavier burden than their debt.
I can scarcely persuade myself to believe that the consideration I
have suggested requires the aid of any auxiliary. But,
unfortunately, auxiliary arguments are at hand. Five millions of
dollars, and probably more, on the score of spoliations committed on
our commerce, depend upon the treaty. The treaty offers the only
prospect of indemnity. Such redress is promised as the merchants
place some confidence in. Will you interpose and frustrate that
hope, leaving to many families nothing but beggary and despair? It
is a smooth proceeding to take a vote in this body; it takes less
than half an hour to call the yeas and nays and reject the treaty.
But what is the effect of it? What, but this? The very men
formerly so loud for redress, such fierce champions that even to ask
for justice was too mean and too slow, now turn their capricious
fury upon the sufferers and say by their vote, to them and their
families, No longer eat bread; petitioners, go home and starve; we
can not satisfy your wrongs and our resentments.
Will you pay the sufferers out of the treasury? No. The answer was
given two years ago, and appears on our journals. Will you give them
letters of marque and reprisal to pay themselves by force? No; that
is war. Besides, it would be an opportunity for those who have
already lost much to lose more. Will you go to war to avenge their
injury? If you do, the war will leave you no money to indemnify
them. If it should be unsuccessful, you will aggravate existing
evils; if successful, your enemy will have no treasure left to give
our merchants; the first losses will be confounded with much
greater, and be forgotten. At the end of a war there must be a
negotiation, which is the very point we have already gained; and why
relinquish it? And who will be confident that the terms of the
negotiation, after a desolating war, would be more acceptable to
another House of Representatives than the treaty before us? Members
and opinions may be so changed that the treaty would then be
rejected for being what the present majority say it should be.
Whether we shall go on making treaties and refusing to execute them,
I know not. Of this I am certain, it will be very difficult to
exercise the treaty-making power on the new principles, with much
reputation or advantage to the country.
The refusal of the posts (inevitable if we reject the treaty) is a
measure too decisive in its nature to be neutral in its
consequences. From great causes we are to look for great effects. A
plain and obvious one will be the price of the western lands will
fall. Settlers will not choose to fix their habitation on a field of
battle. Those who talk so much of the interest of the United States
should calculate how deeply it will be affected by rejecting the
treaty; how vast a tract of wild land will almost cease to be
property. The loss, let it be observed, will fall upon a fund
expressly devoted to sink the national debt. What, then, are we
called upon to do? However the form of the vote and the
protestations of many may disguise the proceeding, our resolution is
in substance, and it deserves to wear the title of a resolution to
prevent the sale of the western lands and the discharge of the
public debt.
Will the tendency to Indian hostilities be contested by any one?
Experience gives the answer. The frontiers were scourged with war
till the negotiation with Great Britain was far advanced, and then
the state of hostility ceased. Perhaps the public agents of both
nations are innocent of fomenting the Indian war, and perhaps they
are not. We ought not, however, to expect that neighboring nations,
highly irritated against each other, will neglect the friendship of
the savages; the traders will gain an influence and will abuse it;
and who is ignorant that their passions are easily raised, and
hardly restrained from violence? Their situation will oblige them to
choose between this country and Great Britain, in case the treaty
should be rejected. They will not be our friends, and at the same
time the friends of our enemies.
But am I reduced to the necessity of proving this point? Certainly
the very men who charged the Indian war on the detention of the
posts, will call for no other proofs than the recital of their own
speeches. It is remembered with what emphasis, with what acrimony,
they expatiated on the burden of taxes, and the drain of blood and
treasure into the western country, in consequence of Britain's
holding the posts. Until the posts are restored, they exclaimed, the
treasury and the frontiers must bleed.
If any, against all these proofs, should maintain that the peace
with the Indians will be stable without the posts, to them I will
urge another reply. From arguments calculated to produce conviction,
I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask
whether it is not already planted there. I resort especially to the
convictions of the western gentlemen, whether, supposing no posts
and no treaty, the settlers will remain in security. Can they take
it upon them to say that an Indian peace, under these circumstances,
will prove firm? No, sir; it will not be peace, but a sword; it will
be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the
tomahawk.
On this theme, my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words
for them--if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal--I would
swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every
log house beyond the mountains, I would say to the inhabitants, Wake
from your false security; your cruel dangers, your more cruel
apprehensions, are soon to be renewed; the wounds, yet unhealed, are
to be torn open again; in the daytime, your path through the woods
will be ambushed; the darkness of midnight will glitter with the
blaze of your dwellings. You are a father--the blood of your sons
shall fatten your corn-field; you are a mother--the war-whoop shall
wake the sleep of the cradle.
On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings.
It is a spectacle of horror which can not be overdrawn. If you have
nature in your hearts, it will speak a language compared with which
all I have said or can say will be poor and frigid.
Will it be whispered that the treaty has made a new champion for the
protection of the frontiers? It is known that my voice as well as
vote has been uniformly given in conformity with the ideas I have
expressed. Protection is the right of the frontiers; it is our duty
to give it.
Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say
that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one
answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one
deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the
most solemn sanctions of duty, for the vote we give? Are despots
alone to be approached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and
blood of their subjects? Are republicans unresponsible? Have the
principles, on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and
kings, no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely
themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a
newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the
windows of that state house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous
nor too late to ask, Can you put the dearest interest of society at
risk without guilt, and without remorse?
It is vain to offer as an excuse, that public men are not to be
reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue from their
measures. This is very true, where they are unforeseen or
inevitable. Those I have depicted are not unforeseen; they are so
far from inevitable, we are going to bring them into being by our
vote. We choose the consequences, and become as justly answerable
for them as for the measure that we know will produce them.
By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires--we bind the
victims. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and
orphans whom our decision will make, to the wretches that will be
roasted at the stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too
serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if
duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not
a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our
country.
There is no mistake in this case; there can be none. Experience has
already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future
victims have already reached us. The western inhabitants are not a
silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues
from the shade of their wilderness. It exclaims, that while one hand
is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It
summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great
effort to the imagination to conceive that events so near are
already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage
vengeance and the shrieks of torture. Already they seem to sigh in
the west wind--already they mingle with every echo from the
mountains.
It is not the part of prudence to be inattentive to the tendencies
of measures. Where there is any ground to fear that these will be
pernicious, wisdom and duty forbid that we should underrate them. If
we reject the treaty, will our peace be as safe as if we executed it
with good faith? I do honor to the intrepid spirit of those who say
it will. It was formerly understood to constitute the excellence of
a man's faith to believe without evidence and against it.
But as opinions on this article are changed, and we are called to
act for our country, it becomes us to 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. . . .