ructure of our nature, we
ought to anticipate the circumstance as a probability, and when we
are admonished by the evidence of our senses that it is the fact.

How can we make professions for ourselves, and offer exhortations to
the House, that no influence should be felt but that of duty, and no
guide respected but that of the understanding, while the peal to
rally every passion of man is continually ringing in our ears?

Our understandings have been addressed, it is true, and with ability
and effect; but, I demand, has any corner of the heart been left
unexplored? It has been ransacked to find auxiliary arguments, and,
when that attempt failed, to awaken the sensibilities that would
require none. Every prejudice and feeling has been summoned to
listen to some peculiar style of address; and yet we seem to believe
and to consider as an affront a doubt that we are strangers to any
influence but that of unbiased reason.

It would be strange that a subject which has aroused in turn all the
passions of the country should be discussed without the interference
of any of our own. We are men, and, therefore, not exempt from those
passions; as citizens and representatives we feel the interests that
must excite them. The hazard of great interests cannot fail to
agitate strong passions. We are not disinterested; it is impossible
we should be dispassionate. The warmth of such feelings may becloud
the judgment, and, for a time, pervert the understanding. But the
public sensibility, and our own, has sharpened the spirit of
inquiry, and given an animation to the debate. The public attention
has been quickened to mark the progress of the discussion, and its
judgment, often hasty and erroneous on first impressions, has become
solid and enlightened at last. Our result will, I hope, on that
account, be the safer and more mature, as well as more accordant
with that of the nation. The only constant agents in political
affairs are the passions of men. Shall we complain of our nature--
shall we say that man ought to have been made otherwise? It is right
already, because he, from whom we derive our nature, ordained it so;
and because thus made and thus acting, the cause of truth and the
public good is the more surely promoted.

But an attempt has been made to produce an influence of a nature
more stubborn and more unfriendly to truth. It is very unfairly
pretended, that the constitutional right of this house is at stake,
and