rked majority. In March,
1796, the President laid the matter before the House. In a twinkling
the floodgates of speechifying burst open; the debates touched
every aspect of the question. James Madison, the wise supporter of
Washington and Hamilton in earlier days and the fellow worker on "The
Federalist," led the Democrats in their furious attacks. He was ably
seconded by Albert Gallatin, the high-minded young Swiss doctrinaire
from Geneva, a terrible man, in whose head principles became two-edged
weapons with Calvinistic precision and mercilessness. The Democrats
requested the President to let them see the correspondence in
reference to the Treaty during its preparation. This he wisely
declined to do. The Constitution did not recognize their right to make
the demand, and he foresaw that, if granted by him then, it might be
used as a harmful precedent.

For many weeks the controversy waxed hot in the House. Scores of
speakers hammered at every argument, yet only one speech eclipsed
all the rest, and remains now, after one hundred and thirty years, a
paragon. There are historians who assert that this was the greatest
speech delivered in Congress before Daniel Webster spoke there--an
implication which might lead irreverent critics to whisper that too
much reading may have dulled their discrimination. But fortunately not
only the text of the speech remains; we have also ample evidence of
the effect it produced on its hearers. Fisher Ames, a Representative
from Massachusetts, uttered it. He was a young lawyer, feeble in
health, but burning, after the manner of some consumptives, with
intellectual and moral fire which strangely belied his slender thread
of physical life. Ames pictured the horrors which would ensue if the
Treaty were rejected. Quite naturally he assumed the part of a man
on the verge of the grave, which increased the impressiveness of his
words. He spoke for three hours. The members of the House listened
with feverish attention; the crowds in the balconies could not smother
their emotion. One witness reports that Vice-President John Adams sat
in the gallery, the tears running down his cheeks, and that he said to
the friend beside him, "My God, how great he is!"

When Ames began, no doubt the Anti-British groups which swelled
the audience turned towards him an unsympathetic if not a scornful
attention--they had already taken a poll of their members, from which
it appeared that they could count on a majority