dit of the Government is gone. Even our
naval commanders are unable to negotiate Government bills abroad--are
reduced to the degrading alternative of asking the endorsement of
foreign States, in order to such negotiation. Some brilliant
individuals have suggested that we have already become so poor that
our widows and wives must bring out their stockings.

Our last loan was negotiated at twelve per cent. discount. The present
loan is not to be taken at any rate, unless the Government descends to
the humiliating alternative of securing State endorsements. Our credit
is going lower and lower every day, and it will soon come to the point
where our bonds will be worth no more than Continental money was.

Suppose we do nothing here. Are gentlemen blind to the consequences?
Gentlemen, honest and patriotic as I know you are, have you no love
for this Union?--have you no care for the preservation of this
Government? God forbid that I should say you have none! I know you too
well. My relations have been too intimate with you, and have existed
too long, for me to suppose it. You do love the Union. I speak for the
South and to the South. I know that we can still labor to keep this
Government together. If we follow the plain dictates of our judgment,
any other course would be impossible.

The Virginia Convention is even now in session, and what a convention
it is! Disguise as we may, deceive ourselves as we will, it is a
convention which proposes to consider the question of withdrawing the
State from the Union. Kentucky and Missouri, if we do nothing, will
soon follow. If there ever was a time in the history of the Government
for conciliation, for patriotic concession, that time is now. The time
has come when parties must be forgotten. Let not the word party be
mentioned here. It is not worthy of us. Representatives of the States,
you are above party--high above. The cords that bind you together are
a hundred times as strong as those which ever bound any party. Unless
we do something, and something very quickly, before the incoming
President is inaugurated, in all human probability he will have only
the States north of Mason and Dixon to govern--that is, if he is to
govern them in peace.

I think there is no right of secession; such is my individual opinion.
But there is a right higher than all these--the right of
self-defence, the right of revolution. It is recognized by the
Constitution itself. The Constitution was adopted by