Monday, December 16.
Foreign Relations.
The House then resumed the consideration of the unfinished business, being the report of the Committee of Foreign Relations.
Mr. Randolph said that he could not express his deep sense of the politeness of the House, except by the regret he felt at the very poor return which they were about to receive for their indulgence. He lamented that it was not in his power to thank, in the name of all the old Republicans of 1798 and 1799, his worthy friend from North Carolina, (Mr. Stanford,) for the sound, sensible, pertinent, and constitutional speech, which he had delivered the other day against this resolution. But he feared, if a writ were to issue against that old party—as had been facetiously said, in another body, of our valiant Army—it would be impossible for a constable with a search warrant to find it. There must be a return of non est inventus. Death, resignation, and desertion had thinned their ranks. They had disappeared. New men and new doctrines had succeeded. He was astonished at the frailty of some memories; or rather, at their aptness to remember to forget every thing but what subserved their present purposes.
The nation had been brought into its present alarming and unprecedented situation by means in nowise unaccountable—by steps as direct and successive as Hogarth's celebrated series of prints, "The Rake's Progress," beginning at the gaming table and ending in a jail, or in bedlam. Our difficulties began to show themselves in 1805 and 1806, when a wise man from the East (Bidwell) was sent to govern the American House of Commons, in quality of manager. With what degree of fidelity he had discharged this duty, we might judge from that which he had since displayed in far inferior trusts. We had commenced our system somewhat on the plan of Catharine of Russia, when she lent her nominal aid to the coalition; we had dealt even more profusely than she in manifestoes; we began, under the instigation of mercantile cupidity, to contend by proclamations and resolutions for the empire of the ocean. But, instead of confining ourselves as she had done to this bloodless warfare, we must copy the wise example of her successors, and after our battle of Friedland, he supposed, we also should have our peace of Tilsit. He gave the little minority praise for having kept the Administration in check, under the salutary restraint of a rigorous examination of their acts—although the Administration had run away with the credit of wishing to take a strong attitude, and had thrown the blame of thwarting their measures on the opposition. That opposition had been composed of all sects and persuasions; but he now perceived that the greater part of them (the Federalists) had gone over to the Court party, for a very obvious reason—because they foresee at the end of the journey, Mr. Speaker, that your defeat will secure their triumph. I wish the gentlemen on my left (the majority) joy of their new travelling companions.
The gentleman from Maryland had expressed surprise at Mr. Randolph's manner of speaking of our origin from an English stock. Could that gentleman repose his head upon his pillow without returning thanks to God that he was descended from English parentage? Whence but from that origin came all the blessings of life, so far as political privileges are concerned? To what is it owing that we are at this moment deliberating under the forms of a free representative government? Suppose we had been colonies of any other European nation—compare our condition with that of the Spanish, Portuguese, or French settlements in America? To what was our superiority owing? To our Anglo-Saxon race. Suppose we had descended from those nations—from the last, especially, which stood self-condemned, on her own confession, as incapable of free government, hugging her chains, glorying in her shame, priding herself in the slave's last poor distinction, the splendor of her tyrant master? Had we sprung from the loins of Frenchmen, (he shuddered at the thought!) where would have been that proud spirit of resistance to Ministerial encroachment on our rights and liberties, which achieved our independence? We should have submitted to the tea tax, the stamp act, and the whole train of Grenville and North ministerial oppression. That which we lifted our hands against in determined scorn, would have been deemed an indulgence. Look at the province of New Spain, or Mexico, as it is, not with strict propriety, called. With a physical force greatly superior to ours in 1776, she had not dared to burst the chains of Spanish despotism, divided, weakened, almost extinct as was the Spanish monarchy. Mr. R. adverted to historical documents to show that America ought to be proud of her Anglo-Saxon descent. We were vastly particular about the breed of our horses, cattle, and sheep, but careless of the breed of human nature. And yet to our Anglo-Saxon origin we owed our resistance to British tyranny. Who were the members of our first Congress? From Massachusetts, Samuel Adams, (and t'other Adams too,) Robert Treat Paine, not Tom. From Connecticut, Roger Sherman, a man of the most profound political wisdom. From New York, James Duane, John Jay. From New Jersey, William Livingston. From Pennsylvania, Thomas Mifflin. From Delaware, Cæsar Rodney, Thomas McKean. From Maryland, William Paca. From Virginia, Peyton Randolph, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton. From South Carolina, Henry Middleton, John Rutledge, Christopher Gadsden, Edward Rutledge. In what school had these illustrious men formed those noble principles of civil liberty asserted by their eloquence and maintained by their arms? Among the grievances stated in their remonstrance to the King, a "standing army" met us at the threshold. It was curious to see in that list of wrongs, so many that had since been self-inflicted by us.
It had been asked, why was the country unprepared for defence? Was he expected to answer this question? The Administration and their overwhelming majorities must answer it. They had wantoned in the plenitude of their power. Who could say them nay? Was it Mr. Randolph's fault that the gentleman from South Carolina had never, in the course of his extensive experience, heard of a proposition to arm the whole body of the militia? which had been damned with a faint appropriation of two hundred thousand dollars, when millions were lavished upon miserable oyster boats. The Clerk of the Senate could not forbear a sneer when he read the title of the bill, at the recollection of the means to enforce it. Mr. R. had proposed himself an annual million until the work should be accomplished. He would forever stand up for the militia. It was not in the scoffs of the epaulette gentry, who, for any service they have seen, are the rawest militia, to degrade them in his eyes. Who were they? Ourselves—the country. Arm them and you are safe, beyond the possibility of danger. Yearly did the standing army sweep off the money, while the militia received empty praise. He would rather see the thing reversed. But there will forever be a Court and Country party. The standing army is the devoted creature of the Court. It must forever be so. Can we wonder that it should be cherished by its master? He spoke of a mercenary soldier in terms of the strongest abhorrence. He would ever uphold the militia; and he detested standing armies, as the profligate instruments of despotism, as the bloodhounds of hell. They would support any and every existing Government. In all history he remembered only one instance of their deserting their Government and taking part with the people; and that was when the Duke of Orleans had bribed the army of the last of the Bourbon Kings. A mercenary soldier was disgusting to our senses; was odious and detestable to the eye of reason, republicanism and religion. Yet, that "mere machine of murder," rude as it is, was the manufacturer of all the Cæsars, and Cromwells, and Bonapartes, of the earth; consecrated by a people's curse, not loud but deep, to the infernal gods. As from the filth of the kennel and common sewer, spread the pestilence that carried havoc through a great city, so from this squalid, outcast, homeless wretch sprung the scourge of military despotism. And yet we are told that there was no danger from an army of 30,000 or 40,000 men. With 5,000 Cæsar had passed the Rubicon. With 22,000 he fought the battle of Pharsalia, which rendered him master of the world. To come to later times—what number had Bonaparte, when, deserting his companions in arms, he returned a solitary fugitive from Egypt, to overturn that Government, which if it had possessed one particle of energy, if it had been possible for the civil authority to cope with military power, would have cashiered him for having ruined one of the best-appointed fleets and armies that ever sailed from a European port? Well might the father of political wisdom (Lord Chatham) say to the Parliament of England, "entrench yourselves in parchment to the teeth, the sword will find a passage to the vitals of the constitution." As good a Republican as ever sat on that floor, (Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun,) had dissolved his political friendship with the Earl of Sunderland, when he found him supporting an army; and the event justified his sagacity. Cromwell, the affected patron of liberty, always encouraged the army. We know the consequence. It was a fundamental principle of free Government that a Legislature which would preserve its liberty must avoid that canker, a standing army. Are we to forget, as chimerical, our notions of this institution, which we imbibed from our very cradles, which are imprinted on our Bills of Rights and Constitutions, which we avowed under the reign of John Adams? Are they to be scourged out of us by the birch of the unfledged political pedagogues of the day? If he were the enemy of this Government, could he reconcile it to his principles, he would follow the example set him in another quarter, and say to the majority, go to your inevitable destruction! He likened the people under this joint operation of the two parties, Ministerial and Federal, to the poor client between two lawyers, or the cloth between the tailor's shears.
He was glad to hear from his venerable friend that this was not to be a party war. When the last additional force bill was raised, to which this was about to be superadded, it was an indispensable preliminary to an appointment, to sign, or to promise to sign, the thirty-nine articles of the creed of the reigning political church. But now the political millennium was at hand—already had John Adams and Citizen Genet laid down, like the lion and the lamb, in the same fold. And if they were not joined by their fellow-laborer in Newgate, it was his keeper's fault, not that of his inclination. Citizen Genet, now an American patriot of the first order, who extols "our Washington;" the champion of the laws of nations; the vindicator of American rights against foreign (and, of course, French) aggression! He was glad to hear that it was not to be a war for the protection of manufactures. To domestic manufactures, in the true sense of the term, he had always been, and ever should be, a friend; he had taken a pride in clothing himself in them until it was attempted to be made a political test. He abhorred tests of all sorts, political and religious, and never would submit to them. He was sick of this cant of patriotism, which extended to a man's victuals, drink, and clothes. He had, from a sort of obstinacy that belonged to him, laid aside the external use of these manufactures; but he was their firm friend, and of the manufacturers also. They were no new things to him; no Merino hobby of the day; he had known them from his infancy. He had been almost tempted to believe, from the similarity of character and avocations, that Hector had a Virginian wife; that Lucretia herself—for she had displayed the spirit of a Virginian matron—was a Virginian lady. Where were they found? Spinning among their handmaids! What was the occupation of a Virginian wife—her highest ambition? To attend to her domestic and household cares; to dispense medicine and food to the sick; to minister to the comfort of her family, her servants, and her poor neighbors, where she had any. At the sight of such a woman his heart bowed down, and did her reverence. Compare with such a being your gad-about card-players. Mr. Randolph said that if the Empress Queen had presented herself decked in the spoils of a ravaged world, at the late exhibition, in contrast with our American matrons, bearing the triumphs of their own ingenuity and industry, we should have looked upon her, and all her splendor, with scorn and contempt in our hearts, although, from politeness to the sex, as gentlemen, we should have suppressed the sentiment.
He could not conclude without noticing the parallel attempted to be drawn by the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr, Calhoun—not quite indeed after the manner of Plutarch—between himself and an illustrious statesman, (Lord Chatham.) The gentleman had been pleased to say, that at the mention of his name, Mr. Randolph's heart had seemed to smite him. It had indeed smitten him: from a sensation which he trusted that gentleman might never feel: against which he seemed well secured. It was a consciousness of his own unworthiness to sustain the high duties imposed upon him by his country, which the recollection of that great man's name had, at the moment, called up. He felt humbled in the contemplation of his worth. Would to God! he possessed some portion of his powers; that he could borrow his eagle-eye, his withering look, the unrivalled majesty of his manner, the magic of his voice, at once the music and the thunder of the spheres, to rouse the House to a sense of their country's danger. In one respect, however, he might boast that he possessed some qualities in common with that immortal statesman. He might assert as lofty a spirit, as unyielding an adherence to the deliberate convictions of his own understanding, as Lord Chatham himself; who, because he set his face against corruption, and had the art of making every coward scoundrel in the nation his foe—concentrating upon himself the "rays of royal indignation, which might illumine but could not consume him;" who, because with intuitive glance he penetrated, resolved and combined every interest of his country, and each design of her enemies, and reached his object "by the flashes of his mind, which, like those of his eye, might be felt but could not be followed," was by the plodding, purblind, groping politicians of the day, attempted to be held up as an empty declaimer, a theatrical gesticulator. Gentlemen must not expect him to quit the anchorage of his own judgment in order to pursue the ignes fatui that wander about Goose Creek.[19] Mr. Speaker, my heart is full—the recollection of that matchless orator and statesman has filled me with unspeakable feelings. To excite them there was no need of the cruel and insulting comparison which the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Calhoun) had attempted to draw between that gigantic statesman and the pigmy who now addresses you.
The question was now taken on concurring with the Committee of the Whole in their agreement to the second resolution, which is in the following words:
"That an additional force of —— thousand regular troops ought to be immediately raised, to serve for three years; and that a bounty in lands ought to be given to encourage enlistment."
And carried as follows:
Yeas.—Willis Alston, jr., William Anderson, Stevenson Archer, Daniel Avery, Ezekiel Bacon, John Baker, David Bard, Josiah Bartlett, Burwell Bassett, William W. Bibb, William Blackledge, Harmanus Bleecker, Thomas Blount, Adam Boyd, James Breckenridge, Robert Brown, William A. Burwell, William Butler, John C. Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, James Cochran, John Clopton, Thomas B. Cooke, Lewis Condit, William Crawford, Roger Davis, John Dawson, Joseph Desha, Samuel Dinsmoor, Elias Earle, James Emott, William Findlay, James Fisk, Asa Fitch, Meshack Franklin, Thomas Gholson, Thomas R. Gold, Charles Goldsborough, Peterson Goodwyn, Isaiah L. Green, Felix Grundy, Bolling Hall, Obed Hall, John A. Harper, Aylett Hawes, Jacob Hufty, John M. Hyneman, Richard M. Johnson, Joseph Kent, Philip B. Key, William R. King, Abner Lacock, Joseph Lefever, Peter Little, Robert Le Roy Livingston, William Lowndes, Aaron Lyle, Nathaniel Macon, George C. Maxwell, Thomas Moore, Archibald McBryde, William McCoy, Samuel McKee, Alexander McKim, Arunah Metcalf, James Milnor, Samuel L. Mitchill, James Morgan, Jeremiah Morrow, Hugh Nelson, Anthony New, Thomas Newbold, Thomas Newton, Stephen Ormsby, William Paulding, jr., Israel Pickens, William Piper, Benjamin Pond, Peter B. Porter, Josiah Quincy, William Reed, Henry M. Ridgely, Samuel Ringgold, John Rhea, John Roane, Jonathan Roberts, William Rodman, Ebenezer Sage, Thomas Sammons, Ebenezer Seaver, John Sevier, Adam Seybert, Samuel Shaw, John Smilie, George Smith, John Smith, Silas Stow, William Strong, George Sullivan, Peter Tallman, Uri Tracy, George M. Troup, Charles Turner, jr., Pierre Van Cortlandt, jr., Robert Whitehall, David R. Williams, William Widgery, Thomas Wilson, Robert Wright, and Richard Wynn—110.
Nays.—Abijah Bigelow, Elijah Brigham, Epaphroditus Champion, Martin Chittenden, John Davenport, jr., William Ely, Edwin Gray, Richard Jackson, jr., Lyman Law, Joseph Lewis, jr., Jonathan O. Mosely, Joseph Pearson, Timothy Pitkin, jr., Elisha R. Potter, John Randolph, Daniel Sheffey, Richard Stanford, Lewis B. Sturges, Samuel Taggart, Benjamin Tallmadge, Laban Wheaton, and Leonard White—22.
The question was then taken on the third resolution, in the following words:
"That it is expedient to authorize the President, under proper regulations, to accept the service of any number of volunteers, not exceeding fifty thousand; to be organized, trained, and held in readiness to act on such service as the exigencies of the Government may require."
And carried: yeas 113—nays 16.
The question was next taken on the fourth resolution, in the following words:
"That the President be authorized to order out from time to time such detachments of the militia, as in his opinion the public service may require."
And carried: yeas 120—nays 8.
The question was then taken on the fifth resolution, in the words following:
"That all the vessels not now in service belonging to the Navy, and worthy of repair, be immediately fitted up and put in commission."
And carried: yeas 111—nays 15.
The question was put from the Chair on the sixth resolution, in these words:
"6. That it is expedient to permit our merchant vessels, owned exclusively by resident citizens, and commanded and navigated solely by citizens, to arm under proper regulations, to be prescribed by law, in self-defence, against all unlawful proceedings towards them on the high seas."
When the resolution was, on motion, ordered to lie on the table.
The three first resolutions, for filling up the present establishment, for raising an additional number of regulars, and authorizing the acceptance of volunteers' services, were referred to the committee who reported them, with instructions to bring in bills in pursuance thereof.