SHALL WE BREAK OUR FAITH? 151 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 the wilderness; it exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps the tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of 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 western wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains. Ex. XCIV.-SHALI WE BREAK OUR FAITH? Speech in Congress, April, 1796. FISHER AMES. Ir would be strange that a subject which has roused 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 interest that must excite them. The hazard of great interest can not 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 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. The question is: SHALL WE BREAK THE TREATY ? The treaty is bad, fatally bad, is the cry. It sacrifices the interest, the honor, the independence of the United States, and the faith of our engagements to France. If we listen to the clamor of party intemperance, the evils are of a number not to be counted, and of a nature not to be borne, even in idea. The language of passion and exaggeration may silence that of reason in other places; it has not done it here. The question here is, whether the treaty be really so very fatal as to oblige the nation to break its faith. I admit that such a treaty ought not to have been made. I admit that self-preservation is the first law of society, as well as of individuals. It would, perhaps, be deemed an abuse of terms to call that a treaty which violates such a principle. I content myself with pursuing the inquiry whether the nature of the compact be such as to justify our refusal to carry it into effect. A treaty is the promise of a nation. Now, promises do not always bind him who makes them. The undecided point is, shall we break our faith? And while our country, and enlightened Europe, await the issue with more than curiosity, we are employed to gather, piecemeal, and article by article, from the instrument, a justification for the deed by trivial calculations of commercial profit and loss. No government, not even a despotism, will break its faith without some pretext; and it must be plausible-it must be such as will carry the public opinion along with it. Reasons of policy, if not of morality, dissuade even Turkey and Algiers from breaches of treaty in mere wantonness of perfidy, in open contempt of the reproaches of their subjects. Surely a popular government will not proceed more arbitrarily as it is more free, nor with less shame and scruple in proportion as it has better morals. It will not proceed against the faith of treaties at all unless the strong and decided sense of the nation shall pronounce, not simply that the treaty is not advantageous, but that it ought to be broken and annulled. And who, I would inquire, is hardy enough to pretend that the public voice demands the violation of the treaty? The evidence of the sense of the great mass of the nation is often equivocal; but when was it ever manifested with more energy and precision than at the present moment? The voice of the people is raised against the measure of refusing the appropriations. If gentlemen should urge, nevertheless, that all the sound of alarm is a counterfeit expression of the sense of the public, I will proceed to other proofs. Is the treaty ruinous to our commerce ? What has blinded the eyes of the merchants and traders? Surely they are not enemies to trade, nor ignorant of their own interests. Their sense is not so liable to be mistaken as that of a nation, and they are almost unanimous. The articles stipulating the redress of our injuries by captures on the sea, are said to be delusive. By whom is this said? The very men whose fortunes are staked upon the competency of that redress say no such thing. They wait with anxious fear, lest you should annul that compact on which all their hopes are rested. Thus we offer proof, little short of absolute demonstration, that the voice of our country is raised, not to sanction, but to depreciate, the non-performance of our engagements. It is not the nation; it is one, and but one, branch of the government that proposes to reject them. With this aspect of things, to reject is an act of desperation. Ex. XCV.-HAIL! COLUMBIA. HAIL! Columbia, happy land! JOSEPH HOPKINSON. Hail! ye heroes, heav'n born band Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause; Enjoyed the peace your valor won. Let Independence be our boast, Ever grateful for the prize, * Son of Francis Hopkinson, the Revolutionary Poet. * Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young day, Who their country have sold, And bartered their God for his image in gold, Our mountains are crowned with imperial oak, Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourished. From the hill-tops they shaded, our shores to defend. Should the tempest of war overshadow our land, Its bolts could ne'er rend Freedom's temple asunder; For, unmoved at its portal would Washington stand, And repulse, with his breast, the assaults of the thunder! His sword from the sleep Of its scabbard would leap, And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep! Let fame to the world sound America's voice; No intrigues can her sons from their government sever; Her pride is her Adams; her laws are his choice, And shall flourish, till Liberty slumbers forever. Then unite heart and hand, Like Leonidas' band, And swear to the God of the ocean and land, While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves. NECESSITY FOR PREPARATION FOR A WAR WITH FRANCE. 163 Ex. CI.-NECESSITY FOR PREPARATION FOR A WAR WITH FRANCE* Speech in Congress, May, 1787. ROBERT GOODLOE HARPER.* WHEN France shall at length be convinced that we are fully resolved to call forth all our resources, and exert all our strength to resist her encroachments and aggressions, she will soon desist from them. She need not be told what these resources are; she well knows their greatness and extent; she well knows that this country, if driven into a war, could soon become invulnerable to her attacks, and could throw a most formidable and prepondering weight into the scale of her adversary. She will not, therefore, drive us to this extremity, but will desist as soon as she finds us determined. Even if our means of injuring France, and of repelling her attacks, were less than they are, still they might be rendered all-sufficient by resolution and courage. It is in these that the strength of nations consists; not in fleets, nor armies, nor population, nor money, but in the "unconquerable will the courage never to submit or yield." These are the true sources of national greatness, and to use the words of a celebrated writer, "where these means are not wanting, all others will be found or created." It was by these means that Holland, in the days of her glory, triumphed over the mighty power of Spain. It is by these that in latter times, the Swiss, a people not half so numerous as we, and possessing few of our advantages, have honorably maintained their neutrality amid the shock of surrounding states, and against the haughty aggressions of France herself. It was this that made Rome the mistress of the world, and Athens the protectress of Greece. When was it that Rome attracted most strongly the admiration of mankind, and impressed the deepest sentiment of fear in the hearts of her enemies? It was when seventy thousand of her sons lay bleeding at Cannæ, and Hannibal, victorious over the Roman armies and twenty nations, was thundering at her gates. It was then that the young and heroic Scipio, having sworn on his sword, in the presence of the fathers of the country, not to despair of the republic, marched forth at the head of a people firmly determined to conquer or die; and * Member of Congress from South Carolina. |