1st. It has been boldly asserted that the President is the author of the existing system.
2dly. They call in question the sincerity of our declarations in wishing to afford effectual protection to the frontiers.
3dly. They deny the competency of the militia.
4thly. The impolicy of reducing the establishment, when a treaty is expected.
In regard to the first, we deny that the President is the author of this plan of prosecuting the war. Not having avowed explicitly himself that he is so, no document appearing to confirm that opinion, we are justified in attributing a system which appears to us ineffectual to his Secretary, and not to him.
It is true, that the Secretary is only a finger of his hand, and the intimate connection which must of necessity subsist between them, perhaps, is the ground upon which the assertion has been made. The Secretaries are all equally near to the President, and if it be admitted that he is the author of this, he may, with equal propriety, be said to have been the author of every system on general subjects which either of them have recommended.
Was he the author of the report on the fisheries? Was he the author of the plan for establishing the National Bank? It is known that he was not, and circumstances might be mentioned (which are withheld from delicacy) to confirm this opinion.
Was he the author of the Funding System? Some gentlemen in the opposition to this motion, would not be willing to give the President that credit if he claimed it, and some who support this motion would not only be sorry that the President had even claimed such a credit, but believe that it was in no respect attributable to him. The same gentleman (Mr. Wadsworth) who first asserted that the President was the author of this military plan, in the same speech admitted it to be the war, as well as the plan of the House, and then argued on the necessity of stability in our measures. It is not very material to the present question whose plan it is; being a public measure, we are justified in offering our objections to it; and this is the first time that I have heard it publicly asserted that a Government should persevere in an error, because they had undertaken it. If the plan be a good one, it may be supported by reason; if a bad one, no name ought to be called in to prop it up.
The inconsistency of that gentleman's (Mr. Wadsworth's) arguments not only supports the motion before the committee, but shows the wretched shifts which have been used to defeat it.
It has been said, in the course of the debate, that individual members, and even this House, are incompetent to decide upon the efficacy or inefficacy of military plans. In answer to this it may be said, that if we are not all Generals, we are all members, and that we have the privilege of thinking for ourselves and for our constituents. To admit this doctrine in the latitude which has been expressed, would be to introduce military ideas indeed; it would be to make soldiers of us, instead of Legislators: nay, worse than that, it would be to revive the exploded doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance.