vigilance that
never sleeps and an unrelaxed constancy and courage. If the
consequences, most unfairly attributed to the vote in the
affirmative, were not chimerical, and worse, for they are deceptive,
I should think it a reproach to be found even moderate in my zeal to
assert the constitutional powers of this assembly; and whenever they
shall be in real danger, the present occasion affords proof that
there will be no want of advocates and champions.

Indeed, so prompt are these feelings, and, when once roused, so
difficult to pacify, that if we could prove the alarm was
groundless, the prejudice against the appropriations may remain on
the mind, and it may even pass for an act of prudence and duty to
negative a measure which was lately believed by ourselves, and may
hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of
the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation
on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as
wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is
possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest
suspicion of an assault.

While these prepossessions remain, all argument is useless. It may
be heard with the ceremony of attention, and lavish its own
resources, and the patience it wearies, to no manner of purpose. The
ears may be open; but the mind will remain locked up, and every pass
to the understanding guarded.

Unless, therefore, this jealous and repulsive fear for the rights of
the House can be allayed, I will not ask a hearing.

I cannot press this topic too far; I cannot address myself with too
much emphasis to the magnanimity and candor of those who sit here,
to suspect their own feelings, and, while they do, to examine the
grounds of their alarm. I repeat it, we must conquer our persuasion
that this body has an interest in one side of the question more than
the other, before we attempt to surmount our objections. On most
subjects, and solemn ones too, perhaps in the most solemn of all, we
form our creed more from inclination than evidence.

Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be only by way of
supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible they have
yielded too suddenly to their alarms for the powers of this House;
that the addresses which have been made with such variety of forms
and with so great dexterity in some of them, to all that is
prejudice and passion in the heart, are either th