e effects or the
instruments of artifice and deception, and then let them see the
subject once more in its singleness and simplicity.

It will be impossible, on taking a fair review of the subject, to
justify the passionate appeals that have been made to us to struggle
for our liberties and rights, and the solemn exhortations to reject
the proposition, said to be concealed in that on your table, to
surrender them forever. In spite of this mock solemnity, I demand,
if the House will not concur in the measure to execute the treaty,
what other course shall we take? How many ways of proceeding lie
open before us?

In the nature of things there are but three; we are either to make
the treaty, to observe it, or break it. It would be absurd to say
we will do neither. If I may repeat a phrase already much abused,
we are under coercion to do one of them; and we have no power, by
the exercise of our discretion, to prevent the consequences of a
choice.

By refusing to act, we choose. The treaty will be broken and fall to
the ground. Where is the fitness, then, of replying to those who
urge upon the House the topics of duty and policy that they attempt
to force the treaty down, and to compel this assembly to renounce
its discretion, and to degrade itself to the rank of a blind and
passive instrument in the hands of the treaty-making power? In case
we reject the appropriation, we do not secure any greater liberty of
action; we gain no safer shelter than before from the consequences
of the decision. Indeed, they are not to be evaded. It is neither
just nor manly to complain that the treaty-making power has produced
this coercion to act. It is not the act or the despotism of that
power--it is the nature of things that compels. Shall we, dreading
to become the blind instruments of power, yield ourselves the
blinder dupes of mere sounds of imposture? Yet that word, that empty
word, coercion, has given scope to an eloquence that, one would
imagine, could not be tired and did not choose to be quieted.

Let us examine still more in detail the alternatives that are before
us, and we shall scarcely fail to see, in still stronger lights, the
futility of our apprehensions for the power and liberty of the
House.

If, as some have suggested, the thing called a treaty is
incomplete,--if it has no binding force or obligation,--the first
question is, Will this House complete the instrument, and, by
concurring, impart to it that