13. On this fubject you need not fufpect any deception on your feelings. It is a fpectacle of horror which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, they will fpeak a language compared with which all I have faid, or can fay, will be poor and frigid. 14 Who will accufe me of wandering out of the fubject? Who will fay that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one anfwer by a fneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one deny that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpofe, by the moft folemn fanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are defpots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans unrefponfible? 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 news paper effay, or to furnish pretty topics of harrangue from the windows of that flate-house? I trust it is neither too prefumptuous nor too late to ask, can you put the deareft interefts of fociety at risk without guilt and without remorfe? 15. By rejecting the pofts, we light the favage fires, we bind the victims. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decifion will make, to the wretches who will be roafted at the ftake, to our country, and I do not deem it too ferious to fay, to confcience and to God. We are anfwerable-and if duty is any thing more than a word of imposture, if confcience is not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country. The 16. There is no mistake in this cafe; there can be none. Experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims have already reached us. western inhabitants are not a filent and uncomplaining facrifice. The voice of humanity iffues from the fhade of their wildernefs. It exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grafps a tomahawk. It fummons our imagination to the fcenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events fo near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of favage vengeance and the fhrieks of torture. Already they feem to figh in the weft winds-already they mingle with every echo from the mountains. 17. Look again at this ftate of things-On the fea coaft, valt loffes uncompensated-On the frontier, Indian war, actual encroachment on our territory. Every where discontent -refentments tenfold more fierce because they will be impotent and humbled. National difcord and abafement. 18. The difputes of the old treaty of 1783, being left to rankle, will revive the almoft extinguished animofities of that period. Wars in all countries, and most of all in fuch as are free, arife from the impetuofity of the public feelings. The defpotifm of Turkey is often obliged by clamor to unheath the fword. War might perhaps be delayed, but could not be prevented. The caufes of it would remain, would be aggravated, would be multiplied, and foon become intolerable.-More captures, more impreffiments, would fwell the lift of our wrongs, and the current of our rage. I make no calculation of the arts of thofe whofe employment it had been, on former occafions, to fan the fire. I fay nothing of the foreign money and emiffaries that might foment the spirit of hoftility, becaufe the ftate of things will naturally run to violence. With lefs than their former exertion, they would be fuccessful. 19. Will our government be able to temper and restrain the turbulence of fuch a crifis? The government, alas, will be in no capacity to govern. A divided people; and divided councils! Shall we cherish the fpirit of peace or fhow the energies of war? Shall we make our adverfary afraid of our ftrength, or difpofe him, by the measures of refentment and broken faith, to respect our rights? Do gentlemen rely on the ftate of peace becaufe both nations will be worfe difpofed to keep it? Because injuries, and infults still harder to endure, will be mutually offered ? 20. Such a state of things will exift, if we should long avoid war, as will be worfe than war. Peace without fecurity, accumulation of injury without redrefs, or the hope of it, refentment against the aggreffor, contempt for ourselves, intef tine difcord and anarchy. Worfe than this need not be apprehended, for if worfe could happen, anarchy would bring it. Is this the peace gentlemen undertake with fuch fearlefs confidence, to maintain? Is this the station of American dignity, which the high fpirited champions of our national independence and honor could endure-nay, which they are anxious and alnoft violent to feize for the country? What is there in the treaty that could humble us fo low? Are they the men to fwallow their refentments, who fo lately were choaking with them? If in the cafe contemplated by them, it should be peace, I do not hesitate to declare it ought not to be peace. 21. 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 fhake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our gov. ernment? Is this the chimera? Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to fay, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrin of a civil war of the departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to fet it aside. How is this diforder 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 interpofition of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my oppofers, to execute, to preferve the conftitution, and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulfion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and fee the iffue? They feem to believe, and they act as if they believed that our union, our peace, our liberty are invulnerable and immortal-as if our happy ftate was not to be disturbed by our diffenfion, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthinefs. Some of them have no doubt better nerves and better difcernment than mine. They can fee the bright afpects and happy confequences of all this array of horFors. They can fee inteftine difcords, our government diforganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union or refources in, "the calm lights of mild philofophy." 22. Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to defpond on this profpect, by prefenting another which it is yet in our power to realize. Is it poffible for a real American to look at the profperity of this country without fome defire for its continuance, without fome refpect for the measures which, many will fay, produced and all will confefs have preserved it? Will he not feel fome dread that a change of fyftem will reverfe 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 confidered at that day as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general defire of our people was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This inftrument, however mifreprefented, affords America that ineftimable fecurity. The caufes of our difputes 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 juftify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentered in this one, that we might escape the defolation of the ftorm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded at the fame time the fure prognoftic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale, it will be a baleful meteor portending tempeft and war. 23. Let us not hesitate then to agree to the appropriation to carry it into a faithful execution. Thus we fhall fave the faith of our nation, fecure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprize that will augment its profperity.The progrefs of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and fome will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vaft, and if peace and good government fhould be preferved, the acquifitions of our citizens are not fo pleafing as the proof of their industry, as the inftruments of their future fuccefs. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vaft crop of our neutrality is all feed-wheat, and is fown again to fwell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of profperity. And in this progrefs, what feems to be fiction, is found to fall fhort of experience. 24. I rofe to fpeak under impreffions that I would have refifted if I could. Those who see me will believe that the reduced ftate 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 refolution I had taken to fit filent was impofed by neceffity and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and finking, as I really am, under a fenfe of weakness, I imagined the very defire of fpeaking Yet when was extinguished by the perfuafion that I had nothing to say. 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 fpert in expoftulation have their value becaufe they protract the crifis, and the short period in which alone we may refolve to escape it. 25. I have thus been led by may feelings to fpeak more at length than I had intended. Yet I have perhaps as little perfonal intereft in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the confequence greater than mine. If however the vote fhould pafs to reject, and a fpirit fhould rife, as it will, with the public diforders to make confufion worse confounded, even I, flender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may out live the government and conftitution of my country. I. From CICERO's Oration against VERRES. THE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been wished for towards allaying the envy your order has been fubject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is (not by human contrivance but fuperior direction) effectually put in our power. 2. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewife in foreign countries, both dangerous to you, and pernicious to the ftate, viz. that in profecutions men of wealth are always fafe, however clearly convicted? 3. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confufion I hope of the propagators of this flanderous imputation, one whofe life and actions condemn him in the opin. ion of all impartial perfons, but who according to his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted: I mean Caius Verres. 4. If that fentence is paffed upon him which his crimes deferve, your authority, fathers, will be venerable and facred in the eyes of the public. But if his great riches fhould bias you in his favour, I thall ftill gain one point, viz. to make it appar. ent to all the world, that what was wanting in this cafe was not a criminal, nor profecutor, but juftice and adequate pun ifhment. 5. To pafs over the fhameful irregularities of his youth, what does his queftorfhip, the first public employment he held, |