had given proof that he was above all human | the United States from Spanish inroad and intemptation. Where now is the revolutionary sult, and to chastise the same." Mr. Randolph hero, to whom you are about to confide this then proceeded:* sacred trust? To whom will you confide the charge of leading the flower of our youth to the heights of Abraham? Will you find him in the person of an acquitted felon? What! then you were unwilling to vote an army where such men, as have been named, held high command! When Washington himself was at the head, did you show such reluctance, feel such scruples; and are you now nothing loth, fearless of every consequence? Will you say that your provocations were less then than now when your direct commerce was interdicted, your ambassadors hooted with derision from the French court, tribute demanded, actual war waged upon you? New Orleans time insulted, alone induced the committee to our Government. Little reliance could be placed upon them, and it was plain, that if “it was the intention of Spain to advance on our Those who opposed the army then were possessions until she be repulsed by an opposing indeed denounced as the partisans of France; force," that force must be a regular army, unas the same men, (some of them at least,) are less we were disposed to abandon all the counnow held up as the advocates of England: try south of Tennessee; that "the protection those firm and undeviating republicans, who of our citizens, and the spirit and the honor of then dared, and now dare, to cling to the ark our country required that force should be interof the constitution, to defend it even at the ex-posed." Nothing remained but for the legispense of their fame, rather than surrender lature to grant the only practicable means, or themselves to the wild projects of mad ambition. to shrink from the most sacred of all its duties; There is a fatality attending plenitude of power. to abandon the soil and its inhabitants to the Soon or late, some mania seizes upon its pos- mercy of hostile invaders. sessors; they fall from the dizzy height through giddiness. Like a vast estate, heaped up by the labor and industry of one man, which seldom survives the third generation; power, gained by patient assiduity, by a faithful and regular discharge of its attendant duties, soon gets above its own origin. Intoxicated with their own greatness, the federal party fell. Will not the same causes produce the same effects now as then? Sir, you may raise this army, you may build up this vast structure of patronage; but "lay not the flattering unction to your souls," you will never live to enjoy the succes-gressions at home. sion. You sign your political death warrant. Yet this report, moderate as it was, was deemed of too strong a character by the House. It was rejected, and, at the motion of a gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bidwell, who has since taken a great fancy also to Canada, and marched off thither, in advance of the committee of foreign relations,)" two millions of dollars were appropriated towards," (not in full of,) "any extraordinary expense which might be incurred in the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations;" in other words, to buy off, at Paris, Spanish ag Was this fact given in evidence of our impartiality towards the belligerents? That to Mr. Randolph here adverted to the provoca- the insults and injuries and actual invasion of tion to hostilities from shutting up the Missis-one of them, we opposed not bullets, but dolsippi by Spain, in 1803; but more fully to the conduct of the House in 1805-6, under the strongest of all imaginable provocations to war -the actual invasion of our country. He read various passages from the President's public message of Dec. 3d, 1805, in which he detailed the injuries and insults which had been received from Spain. Mr. Randolph then referred to a subsequent message of the President upon the same subject, and read the report of the committee to whom the message was referred, reprehending, in strong terms, the conduct of Spain, and recommending the passage of a bill making provision for raising a sufficient number of troops "to protect the southern frontier of lars; *History of the 12th Congress, 1st session, page 442. the "northern hive," of the strongest part of the Union. An insinuation has fallen from the gentleman from Tennessee, (Mr. Grundy,) that the late massacre of our brethren on the Wabash was instigated by the British government. Has the President given any such information? Is it so believed by the administration? I have cause to believe the contrary to be the fact; that such is not their opinion. This insinuation is of the grossest kind—a presumption the most rash; the most unjustifiable. Show but good ground for it, I will give up the question at the threshold. I will be ready to march to Canada. It is, indeed, well calculated to excite the feelings of the western people particularly, who are not quite so tenderly attached to our red brethren as some of our modern philosophers; but it is destitute of any foundation, beyond mere surmise and suspicion. What would be thought, if, without any proof whatsoever, a member should rise in his place and tell us, that the massacre in Savannah—a massacre perpetrated by civilized savages with French commissions in their pockets, was excited by the French government? There is an easy and natural solution of the late transaction on the Wabash, in the well-known character of the aboriginal savage of North America, without resorting to any such mere conjectural estimate. I am sorry to say, that, for this signal calamity and disgrace, the House is, in part at least, answerable. Session after session, our table has been piled up with Indian treaties, for which the appropriations have been voted as a matter of course, without examination. Advantage has been taken of the spirit of the Indians, broken by the war which ended in the treaty of Grenville. Under the ascendency then acquired over them, they have been pent up by subsequent treaties, into nooks; straitened in their quarters by a blind cupidity, seeking to extinguish their title to immense wildernesses-for which, (possessing, as we do already, more land than we can sell or use,) we shall not have occasion, for half a century to come. It is our own thirst for territory, our own want of moderation, that has driven these sons of nature to desperation, of which we feel the effects. Although not personally acquainted with the late Colonel Daveiss, I feel, I am persuaded, as deep and serious regret for his loss as the gentleman from Tennessee himself. I know him only through the representation of a friend of the deceased, (Mr. Rowan,) some time a member of this House: a man, who, for native force of intellect, manliness of character, and high sense of honor, is not inferior to any that have ever sat here. With him I sympathise in the severest calamity that could befall a man of his cast and character. Would to God, they were both now on this floor. From my personal knowledge of the one, I feel confident that I should have his support-and I believe (judging of him from the representation of our common friend) of the other also. I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality of the gentleman, in giving Canada to New York, in order to strengthen the northern balance of power; while, at the same time, he forewarns her, that the western scale must preponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the capitol in motion towards the falls of Ohio; after a short sojourn, taking its flight to the Mississippi, and finally alighting on Darien; which, when the gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of government for the new_republic, (or empire,) of the two Americas! But it seems that "in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly," and to give some color of consistency to that folly, we must now commit a greater. Really, I cannot conceive of a weaker reason offered in support of a present measure, than the justification of a former folly. I hope we shall act a wise part; take warning by our follies, since we have become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no more. It is, indeed, high time to give over such preposterous language and proceedings. This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine, that republicans are destitute of ambition; that they are addicted to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people. But it seems, this is to be a holiday campaign: there is to be no expense of blood or treasure, on our part; Canada is to conquer herself; she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity! The people of that country are first to be seduced from their allegiance, and converted into traitors, as preparatory to making them good citizens! Although I must acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I do not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It is a dangerous experiment. We are to succeed in the French mode, by the system of fraternization all is French! But how dreadfully it might be retorted on the southern and western slaveholding States. I detest this subornation of treason. No; if we must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms; by fair legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction. I am not surprised at the war-spirit which is manifesing itself in gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the carrying trade of belligerent-colonial produce, this country was most unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe. By a series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible to every rational, sober-minded man, the southern planters, by their own votes, have succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven cents, and of tobacco, (a few choice crops excepted,) to nothing; and in raising the price of blankets, (of which a few would not be amiss in a Canadian campaign,) coarse woollens, and every article of first necessity, three or four hundred per centum. seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador? And now that, by our own acts, we have | I ask what reparation or atonement they can brought ourselves into this unprecedented expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, condition, we must get out of it in any way, after they shall have made a tender of their but by an acknowledgment of our own want person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true of republics? We have by our own wise (I remedy? Who will profit by it? Speculators; will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased a few lucky merchants who draw prizes in the the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, lottery; commissaries and contractors. Who that at last we begin to cast a wishful eye at must suffer by it? The people. It is their Canada. Having done so much towards its blood, their taxes, that must flow to support it. | improvement, by the exercise of “our restricBut gentlemen avowed, that they would not tive energies," we begin to think the laborer go to war for the carrying trade; that is, for worthy of his hire, and to put in claim for our any other but the direct export and import portion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer trade; that which carries our native products to our point? As his minister said to the king abroad, and brings back the return cargo; and of Epirus, "may we not as well take our bottle yet they stickle for our commercial rights, and of wine before as after this exploit? Go! march will go to war for them! I wish to know, in to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chespoint of principle, what difference gentlemen apeake and her hundred tributary rivers; the can point out between the abandonment of this whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St. or of that maritime right? Do gentlemen Mary's, unprotected! You have taken Quebec assume the lofty port and tone of chivalrous-have you conquered England? Will you redressers of maritime wrongs, and declare their readiness to surrender every other maritime right, provided they may remain unmolested in the exercise of the humble privilege of carrying their own produce abroad, and bringing back a return cargo? Do you make this declaration to the enemy at the outset? Do you state the minimum with which you will be contented, and put it in their power to close with your proposals at their option; give her the basis of a treaty ruinous and disgraceful beyond example and expression? And this, too, after having turned up your noses in disdain at the treaties of Mr. Jay and Mr. Monroe! Will you say to England, "end the war when you please, give us the direct trade in our own produce, we are content?" But what will the merchants of Salem, and Boston, and New York, and Philadelphia, and Baltimore, the men of Marblehead and Cape Cod say to this? Will they join in a war, professing to have for its object, what they would consider, (and justly too,) as the sacrifice of their maritime rights, yet affecting to be a war for the protection of commerce? "Her march is on the mountain wave, Will you call upon her to leave your ports and harbors untouched, only just till you can return from Canada, to defend them? The coast is to be left defenceless, whilst men of the interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. But grant for a moment, for mere argument's sake, that in Canada you touched the sinews of her strength, instead of removing a clog upon her resources-an incumbrance, but one, which, from a spirit of honor, she will vigorously defend. In what situation would you then place some of the best men of the nation? As Chatham and Burke, and the whole band of her patriots, prayed for her defeat in 1776, so must some of the truest friends of their country deprecate the success of our arms against the only power that holds in check the arch-enemy of mankind. The committee have outstripped the executive. In designating the power, against whom I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledg- this force is to be employed, as has most unading the demoralizing and destructive conse-visedly been done in the preamble or manifesto quences of the non-importation law; confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold, when it was enacted. And will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? "But our good friend, the French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and as we cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his love for the Americans, we must, in point of fact, become parties to his war. Who can be so cruel as to refuse him that favor?" My imagination shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to reflect, whether they are not about to abandon all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages, "insults and injuries" of the French government; to give up our claim for plundered millions, and with which the resolutions are prefaced, they have not consulted the views of the executive, that designation is equivalent to an abandonment of all our claims on the French government. No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were flocking round their prey-the carcass of a great military establishment. Men of tainted reputation, of broken fortune, (if they ever had any,) and of battered constitutions, "choice spirits tired of the dull pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agencies and commissions, willing to doze in gross stupidity over the public fire; to light the public candle at both ends. Honorable men undoubtedly there are, ready to serve their country; but what man of spirit, or of selfrespect, will accept a commission in the present army? The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Grundy, addressed himself yesterday, exclusively to the "republicans of the House." I know not whether I may consider myself as entitled to any part of the benefit of the honorable gentleman's discourse. It belongs not, however, to that gentleman to decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of republicanism, I shall receive it from the fathers of the church, and not from the junior apprentices of the law. I shall appeal to my worthy friends from Carolina, Messrs. Macon and Stanford, "men with whom I have measured my strength," by whose side I have fought during the reign of terror; for it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It is not at all to my taste that sort of republicanism which was supported, on this side of the Atlantic, by the father of the sedition law, John Adams, and by Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism! of John Adams and William Cobbett ! "Par nobile fratrum," now united as in 1798, whom the cruel walls of Newgate alone keep from flying to each other's embrace-but whom, in sentiment, it is impossible to divide. Gallant crusaders in the holy cause of republicanism! Such "republicanism does, indeed, mean any thing or nothing." Our people will not submit to be taxed for this war of conquest and dominion. The government of the United States was not calculated to wage offensive foreign war; it was instituted for the common defence and general welfare; and whosoever should embark it in a war of offence, would put it to a test which it is by no means calculated to endure. Make it out that Great Britain has instigated the Indians on a late occasion, and I am ready for battle; but not for dominion. I am unwilling, however, under present circumstances, to take Canada, at the risk of the constitution, to embark in a common cause with France, and be dragged at the wheels of the car of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman from Tennessee, or Genesee, or Lake Champlain, there may be some prospect of advantage. Their hemp would bear a great price by the exclusion of foreign supply. In that, too, the great importers are deeply interested. The upper country on the Hudson and the lakes would be enriched by the supplies for the troops, which they alone could furnish. They would have the exclusive market: to say nothing of the increased preponderance from the acquisition of Canada and that section of the Union which the Southern and Western States have already felt so severely in the apportionment bill. and that spot unhappily governed the whole State of Maryland. His friend, the late Governor of Maryland, Mr. Lloyd, at the very time he was bringing his warlike resolutions before the legislature of the State, was liable on any night to be taken out of his bed and carried off with his family, by the most contemptible picaroon. Such was the situation of many a family in Maryland, and lower Virginia. Permit me now, sir, to call your attention to the subject of our black population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is with reluctance that I touch it at all; but in cases of great emergency, the state physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken delicacy from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the occasion calls for it. What is the situation of the slaveholding States? During the war of the Revolution, so fixed were their habits of subordination, that while the whole country was overrun by the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we, therefore, be unobservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent, but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor slaves did not escape the general deluge. The French revolution has polluted even them. Nay, there have not been wanting men in this House: witness our legislative Legendre, the butcher who once held a seat here, to preach upon this floor these imprescriptible rights to a crowded audience of blacks in the galleries: teaching them that they are equal to their masters; in other words advising them to cut their throats. Similar doctrines have been disseminated by pedlars from New England and elsewhere, throughout the southern country; and masters have been found so infatuated, as by their lives and conversation, by a general contempt of order, morality, and religion, unthinkingly to cherish these seeds of self-destruction to them and their families. What has been the consequence? Within the last ten years, repeated alarms of insurrection among the slaves: some of them awful indeed. From the spreading of this infernal doctrine, a state of insecurity. Men dead to the the whole southern country has been thrown operation of moral causes, have taken away from the poor slave his habits of loyalty and obedience to his master, which lightened his servitude by a double operation; beguiling his own cares and disarming his master's suspicions and severity; and now, like true empirics in Mr. Randolph here adverted to the defence-into less state of the sea-ports, and particularly of the Chesapeake, and observed, that there was but a single spot on either shore, which could be considered in tolerable security, from the nature of the port and the strength of the population politics, you are called upon to trust to the mere physical strength of the fetter which holds him in bondage. You have deprived him of all moral restraint; you have tempted him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, just enough to perfect him in wickedness; you have opened his eyes to his nakedness; you have armed his nature against the hand that has fed, that has clothed him, that has cherished him in sickness; that hand, which before he became a pupil of your school, he had been accustomed to press with respectful affection. You have done all this and then show him the gibbet and the wheel, as incentives to a sullen, repugnant obedience. God forbid, sir, that the Southern States should ever see an enemy on their shores, with these infernal principles of French fraternity in the van. While talking of taking Canada, some of us are shuddering for our own safety at home. I speak from facts, when I say, that the nightbell never tolls for fire in Richmond, that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. I have been a witness of some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia. How have we shown our sympathy with the patriots of Spain, or with the American provinces? By seizing on one of them, her claim to which we had formerly respected, as soon as the parent country was embroiled at home. Is it thus we yield them assistance against the arch-fiend who is grasping at the sceptre of the civilized world? The object of France is as much Spanish-American as old Spain herself. Much as I hate a standing army, I could almost find it in my heart to vote one, could it be sent to the assistance of the Spanish patriots. Mr. Randolph then proceeded to notice the unjust and illiberal imputation of British attachments, against certain characters in this country, sometimes insinuated in that House, but openly avowed out of it. Against whom are these charges brought? Against men who, in the war of the revolution, were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. And by whom are they made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. It is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must and ought, with severity to be put down in this House; and out of it to meet the lie direct. We have no fellow-feeling for the suffering and oppressed Spaniards! Yet even them we do not reprobate. Strange! that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole world! The great autocrat of all the Russias, receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates, are a very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. "Turks, Jews, and Infidels," Melimelli or the Little Turtle: barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro, or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins: in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen: whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted: from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowedrepresentation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence against our fellow Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves. In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America, learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots; not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, than by Chatham and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sidney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God, I possessed in common Sherlock and a Porteus upon my religion. This with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a is a British influence which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom have they been suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate and Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French revolution; who, in this abused and insulted country, have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in republicanism, except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw. These are the patriots who scruple not to brand with the epithet of tory, the men, (looking towards the seat of Col. Stewart,) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in such keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them are deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war, (for they are, for the most part, old enough to have borne arms,) and you strike them dumb; their |