"The declaration will not strengthen us by one man, or by the least supply, while it may expose our soldiers to additional cruelties and outrages. Without some preliminary trials of our strength we ought not to commit our country upon an alternative where to recede would be infamy, and to persist might be destruction."
In this strain he spoke long, urging all the reasons for delay which an ingenious mind could devise, and clothing his argument with the charm of a fine literary style.
He ceased. There was a pause. No one seemed willing to break the silence, until it began to be embarrassing, and then painful.
Many eyes were turned toward John Adams, who for eighteen months had been the chief spokesman of the party for independence. He had advocated the measure before Thomas Paine had written "Common Sense," and when it had not one influential friend in Philadelphia. Early in the previous year, when it first became known by the accidental publicity of a letter that he favored the Declaration of Independence, the solid men of Philadelphia shunned him as if he had had the leprosy.
"I walked the streets of Philadelphia," he once wrote, "in solitude, borne down by the weight of care and unpopularity," and Dr. Rush mentions that he saw him thus walking the streets alone, "an object of nearly universal scorn and detestation."
But he was on the gaining side. The cruel burning of Falmouth on the coast of Maine weaned New England from the mother country, and the burning of Norfolk completed the same office for Virginia.
To-day he stood with a majority of the people behind him. To-day he spoke the sentiments of his country. To-day he uttered the words which every man on the floor but John Dickinson wished to hear uttered.
Yet he did not immediately rise; for he wished some one else, some one less committed to Independence than he was, to take the lead in that day's debate. At length, however, since every one else hung back, he got upon his feet to answer Mr. Dickinson.
The speech which he delivered on this occasion was deemed by those who heard it the most powerful effort of his life, though he had made no special preparation for it beforehand. He had thought of the subject from his college days, and had never ceased to regard the Independence of his country as only a question of time. During his professional life, it had been the frequent theme of his reflections, and he was perfectly familiar with every phase of it.
"This is the first time in my life," said he, "that I have ever wished for the talents and eloquence of the ancient orators of Greece and Rome, for I am very sure that none of them ever had before him a question of more importance to his country and to the world. They would, probably, upon less occasions than this, have begun by solemn invocations to their divinities for assistance.