The American Eloquence - Various Author

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and destructive consequences 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 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 I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of "our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in a claim for our portion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer to our point? As his minister said to the king of Epirus, "May we not as well take our bottle of wine before as after this exploit?" Go march to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers; the whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St. Mary's, unprotected! You have taken Quebec—have you conquered England? Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador?

      "Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep!"

      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, while men of the interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. * * *

      No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were flocking around 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 self-respect, 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 was 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! * * *

      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 the 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 of 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. * * *

      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 slave-holding 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. * * *

      Men, dead to the operation of moral causes, have taken away from the poor slave his habit 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 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 night-bell 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. * * *

      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 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 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 Shakespeare, 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 borrowed: representation, 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

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