iples, with much
reputation or advantage to the country.

The refusal of the posts (inevitable if we reject the treaty) is a
measure too decisive in its nature to be neutral in its
consequences. From great causes we are to look for great effects. A
plain and obvious one will be the price of the western lands will
fall. Settlers will not choose to fix their habitation on a field of
battle. Those who talk so much of the interest of the United States
should calculate how deeply it will be affected by rejecting the
treaty; how vast a tract of wild land will almost cease to be
property. The loss, let it be observed, will fall upon a fund
expressly devoted to sink the national debt. What, then, are we
called upon to do? However the form of the vote and the
protestations of many may disguise the proceeding, our resolution is
in substance, and it deserves to wear the title of a resolution to
prevent the sale of the western lands and the discharge of the
public debt.

Will the tendency to Indian hostilities be contested by any one?
Experience gives the answer. The frontiers were scourged with war
till the negotiation with Great Britain was far advanced, and then
the state of hostility ceased. Perhaps the public agents of both
nations are innocent of fomenting the Indian war, and perhaps they
are not. We ought not, however, to expect that neighboring nations,
highly irritated against each other, will neglect the friendship of
the savages; the traders will gain an influence and will abuse it;
and who is ignorant that their passions are easily raised, and
hardly restrained from violence? Their situation will oblige them to
choose between this country and Great Britain, in case the treaty
should be rejected. They will not be our friends, and at the same
time the friends of our enemies.

But am I reduced to the necessity of proving this point? Certainly
the very men who charged the Indian war on the detention of the
posts, will call for no other proofs than the recital of their own
speeches. It is remembered with what emphasis, with what acrimony,
they expatiated on the burden of taxes, and the drain of blood and
treasure into the western country, in consequence of Britain's
holding the posts. Until the posts are restored, they exclaimed, the
treasury and the frontiers must bleed.

If any, against all these proofs, should maintain that the peace
with the Indians will be stable without the posts, to them I will
u