to-day, we are too
apt to reverse it, and not to do today what we can put off to to-morrow.
But this duty can be no longer put off. To-day we are at peace;
to-morrow war. The curtain of separation is drawing between us, and
probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not both of us, will be at
rest with our fathers. Let me now, then, while I may, renew to you the
declarations of my warm attachment, which in no period of life has ever
been weakened, and seems to become stronger as the remaining objects of
our youthful affections are fewer.

Our two countries are to be at war, but not you and I. And why should
our two countries be at war, when by peace we can be so much more useful
to one another? Surely the world will acquit our government of having
sought it. Never before has there been an instance of a nation's bearing
so much as we have borne. Two items alone in our catalogue of wrongs
will for ever acquit us of being the aggressors; the impressment of our
seamen, and the excluding us from the ocean. The first foundations of
the social compact would be broken up, were we definitively to refuse to
its members the protection of their persons and property, while in their
lawful pursuits. I think the war will not be short, because the object
of England, long obvious, is to claim the ocean as her domain, and to
exact transit duties from every vessel traversing it. This is the sum of
her orders of council, which were only a step in this bold experiment,
never meant to be retracted if it could be permanently maintained. And
this object must continue her in war with all the world. To this I
see no termination, until her exaggerated efforts, so much beyond her
natural strength and resources, shall have exhausted her to bankruptcy.
The approach of this crisis is, I think, visible in the departure of her
precious metals, and depreciation of her paper medium. We, who have gone
through that operation, know its symptoms, its course, and consequences.
In England they will be more serious than elsewhere, because half the
wealth of her people is now in that medium, the private revenue of her
money-holders, or rather of her paper-holders, being, I believe, greater
than that of her land-holders. Such a proportion of property, imaginary
and baseless as it is, cannot be reduced to vapor, but with great
explosion. She will rise out of its ruins, however, because her lands,
her houses, her arts, will remain, and the greater part of her men.