y afraid
of our strength, or dispose him, by the measures of resentment and
broken faith, to respect our rights? Do gentlemen rely on the state of
peace because both nations will be more disposed to keep it? because
injuries and insults still harder to endure, will be mutually
offered?...

"Is there anything in the prospect of the interior state of the
country, to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not
the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and
then unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it
going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the
appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the
departments? Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to
set it aside. How is this disorder in the machine to be rectified? While
it exists its movements must stop; and when we talk of a remedy, is that
any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary interposition of
the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to
execute, to preserve the constitution, and the public order? Is this the
state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage
to contemplate and to praise; or beyond which their penetration can
reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they
believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and
immortal; as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our
dissentions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our
unworthiness. Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better
discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and happy
consequences of all this array of horrors. They can see intestine
discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated,
multiplied, and un-redressed, peace with dishonor, or war without
justice, union, or resources, in 'the calm lights of mild
philosophy....'

"Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this
prospect, by presenting another which it is in our power to realize. Is
it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this
country without some desire for its continuance, without some respect
for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess,
have preserved it? Will he not feel some dread that a change of system
will reverse the scene? The well-grounded fears of our citizens, in
1794, were removed by the treaty, but are