their name is a heavier burden than| And who will be confident that the their debt. terms of the negotiation, after a deI can scarcely persuade myself to solating war, would be more acceptbelieve, that the consideration I have able to another house of representasuggested requires the aid of any aux- tives than the treaty before us? iliary; but, unfortunately, auxiliary Members and opinions may be so arguments are at hand. Five mil- changed, that the treaty would then lions of dollars, and probably more, be rejected for being what the preon the score of spoliations committed sent majority say it should be. on our commerce, depend upon the Whether we shall go on making treatreaty the treaty offers the only ties and refusing to execute them, I prospect of indemnity. Such redress know not: of this I am certain, it is promised as the merchants place will be very difficult to exercise the some confidence in. Will you inter- treaty-making power on the new prinpose and frustrate that hope, leaving ciple, with much reputation or advanto many families nothing but beg-tage to the country.

gary and despair? It is a smooth pro- The refusal of the posts (inevitaceeding to take a vote in this body: ble if we reject the treaty) is a meait takes less than half an hour to call sure too decisive in its nature to be the yeas and nays, and reject the neutral in its consequences. From treaty. But what is the effect of it? great causes we are to look for great What but this: the very men, for- effects. A plain and obvious one merly so loud for redress, such fierce will be the price of the Western lands champions, that even to ask for jus- will fall: settlers will not choose to fix tice was too mean and too slow, now their habitation on a field of battle. turn their capricious fury upon the Those who talk so much of the interest sufferers, and say, by their vote, to of the United States should calculate, them and their families, no longer how deeply it will be affected by eat bread petitioners, go home and rejecting the treaty; how vast a tract starve: we cannot satisfy your wrongs of wild land will almost cease to be and our resentments. property. This loss, let it be ob

Will you pay the sufferers out of served, will fall upon a fund expressthe treasury? No. The answerly devoted to sink the national debt. was given two years ago, and appears What then are we called upon to do? on our journals. Will you give them However the form of the vote and letters of marque and reprisal, to pay the protestations of many may disthemselves by force? No. That is guise the proceeding, our resolution war. Besides it would be an oppor- is in substance, and it deserves to tunity for those who have already lost wear the title of a resolution, to premuch to lose more. Will you go to vent the sale of the Western lands war to avenge their injury? If you and the discharge of the public debt. do, the war will leave you no money Will the tendency to Indian hosto indemnify them. If it should be tilities be contested by any one? unsuccessful, you will aggravate ex- Experience gives the answer. The isting evils if successful, your ene- frontiers were scourged with war, unmy will have no treasure left to give til the negotiation with Great Britain our merchants: the first losses will was far advanced; and then the state be confounded with much greater, of hostility ceased. Perhaps the and be forgotten. At the end of a public agents of both nations are inwar there must be a negotiation, nocent of fomenting the Indian wat, which is the very point we have al- and perhaps they are not. We ought ready gained and why relinquish it? not, however, to expect that neigh

bouring nations, highly irritated yond the mountains. I would say against each other, will neglect the to the inhabitants, wake from your friendship of the savages. The tra- false security: your cruel dangers, ders will gain an influence and will your more cruel apprehensions are abuse it; and who is ignorant that soon to be renewed: the wounds, their passions are easily raised and yet unhealed, are to be torn open hardly restrained from violence? again in the day time, your path Their situation will oblige them to through the woods will be ambushed; choose between this country and the darkness of midnight will glitter Great Britain, in case the treaty with the blaze of your dwellings. should be rejected: they will not be You are a father-the blood of your our friends, and at the same time the sons shall fatten your corn-field: friends of our enemies. you are a mother-the war whoop

But am I reduced to the necessity shall wake the sleep of the cradle. of proving this point? Certainly the On this subject you need not susvery men who charged the Indian pect any deception on your feelings war on the detention of the posts, it is a spectacle of horror, which canwill call for no other proof than the not be overdrawn. If you have narecital of their own speeches. It is ture in your hearts, they will speak a remembered, with what emphasis, language, compared with which all I with what acrimony, they expatiated have said or can say will be poor and on the burden of taxes, and the drain frigid.

of blood and treasure into the western Will it be whispered, that the treacountry, in consequence of Britain's ty has made me a new champion for holding the posts. Until the posts the protection of the frontiers. It is are restored, they exclaimed, the trea- known, that my voice as well as vote sury and the frontiers must bleed.

have been uniformly given in conforIf any, against all these proofs, mity with the ideas I have expressed. should maintain, that the peace with Protection is the right of the fronthe Indians will be stable without the tiers; it is our duty to give it. posts, to them I will urge another re- Who will accuse me of wandering ply. From arguments calculated to out of the subject? Who will say, produce conviction, I will appeal di- that I exaggerate the tendencies rectly to the hearts of those who hear of our measures? Will any one me, and ask whether it is not already answer by a sneer, that all this is planted there? I resort especially idle preaching. Will any one deny, to the convictions of the Western that we are bound, and I would hope gentlemen, whether, supposing no to good purpose, by the most solemn posts and no treaty, the settlers will sanctions of duty for the vote we remain in security? Can they take give? Are despots alone to be reit upon them to say, that an Indian proached for unfeeling indifference peace, under these circumstances, to the tears and blood of their subwill prove firm? No, sir, it will not jects? Are republicans unresponsibe peace, but a sword; it will be no ble? Have the principles, on which better than a lure to draw victims you ground the reproach upon cabiwithin the reach of the tomahawk. nets and kings, no practical influOn this theme, my emotions are ence, no binding force? Are they unutterable. If I could find words merely themes of idle declamation, for them, if my powers bore any pro- introduced to decorate the morality portion to my zeal, I would swell my of a newspaper essay, or to furnish voice to such a note of remonstrance, pretty topics of harangue from the it should reach every log-house be-windows of that state-house? I trust

it is neither too presumptuous nor § 116. Conclusion of Mr. HARper's

Speech on resisting the Encroachments of France. 1797.

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 Supposing therefore, Mr. Harper public men are not to be reproached said, that the people of this country for the evils that may happen to en- were unwilling to oppose her, and sue from their measures. This is the government unable; that we very true, where they are unforeseen should prefer peace with submission, or inevitable. Those I have depict- to the risk of war; that a strong pared are not unforeseen: they are so ty devoted to her would hang on the far from inevitable, we are going to government, and impede all its meabring them into being by our vote: sures of reaction; and that if she we choose the consequences, and be- should place us by her aggressions in come as justly answerable for them, a situation, where the choice should as for the measure that we know will seem to aim between a war with produce them. England and a war with her, our haBy rejecting the posts, we light tred to England, joined to those oththe savage fires, we bind the victims. er causes, would force us to take the This day we undertake to render ac- former part of the alternative; she count to the widows and orphans had resolved on the measures which whom our decision will make, to the she was then pursuing, and the obwretches that will be roasted at the ject of which was to make us restake, to our country, and I do not nounce the treaty with England, and deem it too serious to say, to con- enter into a quarrel with that nation: science and to God. We are an in fine to effect that by force and agswerable; and if duty be any thing gressions, which she had attempted more than a word of imposture, if in vain by four years of intriguing conscience be not a bugbear, we are and insidious policy. preparing to make ourselves as If such were her objects how was wretched as our country. she to be induced to renounce them?

There is no mistake in this case, By trifling concessions of this, that, or there can be none: experience has the other article of a treaty, this, that, already been the prophet of events, or the other advantage in trade? and the cries of our future victims No. It seemed to him a delusion have already reached us. The West- equally fatal and unaccountable, to ern inhabitants are not a silent and suppose that she was to be thus satisuncomplaining sacrifice. The voice fied: to suppose that by these inconof humanity issues from the shade of siderable favours, which she had not the wilderness: it exclaims, that even asked for, she was to be bought while one hand is held up to reject off from a plan so great and importthis treaty, the other grasps a toma- ant. It seemed to him the most fahawk. It summons our imagination tal and unaccountable delusion, that to the scenes that will open. It is could make gentlemen shut their no great effort of the imagination to eyes to this testimony of every naconceive that events so near are al- tion, to this glare of light bursting in ready begun. I can fancy that I lis- from every side; that could render ten to the yells of savage vengeance them blind to the projects of France, and the shrieks of torture: already to the Herculean strides of her overthey seem to sigh in the Western towering ambition, which so evidentwind; already they mingle with eve-ly aimed at nothing less than the esry echo from the mountains. tablishment of universal empire, or

universal influence, and had fixed on her encroachments and aggressions, this country as one of the instruments she would soon desist from them. for accomplishing her plan. She need not be told what these re

It was against this dangerous de- sources were; she well knew their lusion that he wished to warn the greatness and extent; she well knew house and the country. He wished that this country, if driven into a war, to warn them not to deceive them- could soon become invulnerable to selves with the vain and fallacious her attacks, and could throw a most expectation, that the concessions pro- formidable and preponderating weight posed by this amendment would sa- into the scale of her adversary. She tisfy the wishes or arrest the mea- would not therefore drive us to this sures of France. Did he dissuade extremity, but would desist as soon from these concessions? Far from as she found us determined. He it, he wished them to be offered, and in had before touched (he said) on our the way the most likely to give weight means of injuring France, and reto the offer. It was a bridge which pelling her attacks; and if those he was willing to build, for the pride means were less, still they might be of France to retreat on; but what rendered all sufficient, by resolution he wished to warn the house against, and courage. It was in these that was the resting satisfied with building the strength of nations consisted, and the bridge, to the neglect of those not in fleets, nor armies, nor populameasures by which France might be tion, nor money in the "unconquerinduced to march over it, after it able will-the courage never to subshould be built. He wished to nego-mit or yield." These were the true tiate, and he even relied much on sources of national greatness; and success; but the success of the ne- to use the words of a celebrated wrigotiation must be secured on that ter," where these means were not floor. It must be secured by adopt- wanting, all others would be found ing firm language and energetic mea-or created." It was by these means sures; measures which would con- that Holland, in the days of her glovince France, that those opinions re- ry, had triumphed over the mighty specting this country on which her power of Spain. It was by these system was founded, were wholly that in later times, and in the course erroneous; that we were neither a of the present war, the Swiss, a peoweak, a pusillanimous, nor a divided ple not half so numerous as we, and people; that we were not disposed to possessing few of our advantages, barter honour for quiet, nor to save had honourably maintained their neuour money at the expense of our trality amid the shock of surrounding rights: which might convince her states, and against the haughty agthat we understood her projects, and gressions of France herself. were determined to oppose them, Swiss had not been without their triwith all our resources, and at the ha- als. They had given refuge to many zard of all our possessions. This, French emigrants, whom their vengehe believed, was the way to ensure ful and implacable country had drisuccess to the negotiation; and ven and pursued from state to state, without this he should consider it as and whom it wished to deprive of a measure equally vain, weak, and de- their last asylum in the mountains of lusive. Swisserland. The Swiss were reWhen France should be at length quired to drive them away, under the convinced, that we were firmly re- pretence that to afford them a retreat solved to call forth all our resources, was contrary to the laws of neutraliand exert all our strength to resist ty. They at first temporized and

The

evaded the demand: France insist- to fear. This conviction would be ed; and finding at length that eva- to us instead of fleets and armies, and sion was useless they assumed a firm even more effectual. Seeing us thus attitude, and declared that having prepared she would not attack us. afforded an asylum to those unfortu- Then would she listen to our peacenate exiles, which no law of neutra- able proposals; then would she aclity forbad, they would protect them cept the concessions we meant to of in it at every hazard. France find- fer. But should this offer not be ing them thus resolved, gave up the thus supported, should it be attendattempt. This had been effected by ed by any circumstances from which that determined courage, which alone she can discover weakness, distrust or can make a nation great or respecta- division, then would she reject it with ble: and this effect had invariably derision and scorn. He viewed in been produced by the same cause, in the proposed amendment circumstanevery age and every clime. It was ces of this kind; and for that among this that made Rome the mistress of other reasons should vote against it. the world, and Athens the protec- He should vote against it, not betress of Greece. When was it that cause he was for war, but because he Rome attracted most strongly the ad- was for peace; and because he saw miration of mankind, and impressed in this amendment itself, and more the deepest sentiment of fear on the especially in the course to which it hearts of her enemies? It was when pointed, the means of impeding inseventy thousand of her sons lay stead of promoting our pacific enbleeding at Cannæ, and Hannibal deavours. And let it be remembervictorious over three Roman armies ed, he said, that when we give this and twenty nations, was thundering vote, we vote not only on the peace at her gates. It was then that the of our country, but on what is far young and heroic Scipio, having more important, on its rights and its sworn on his sword, in the presence honour.

of the fathers of the country, not to

despair of the republic, marched. forth at the head of a people, firmly

resolved to conquer or die; and that $117. The Landing of the Pilgrims

at Plymouth.

resolution ensured them the victory. When did Athens appear the greatest and the most formidable? It was Different, indeed, most widely difwhen giving up their houses and pos- ferent from all these instances of emisessions to the flames of the enemy, gration and plantation, were the and having transferred their wives, condition, the purposes, and the prostheir children, their aged parents, pects of our Fathers, when they esand the symbols of their religion, on tablished their infant colony upon board of their fleet, they resolved to this spot. They came hither to a consider themselves as the republic, land from which they were never to and their ships as their country. It return. Hither they had brought, was then they struck that terrible and here they were to fix, their hopes, blow, under which the greatness of their attachments, and their objects. Persia sunk and expired. Some natural tears they shed, as they

These means, he said, and many left the pleasant abodes of their faothers were in our power. Let us thers, and some emotions they supresolve to use them, and act so as to pressed, when the white cliffs of their convince France that we had taken native country, now seen for the last the resolution, and there was nothing time, grew dim to their sight. They