Another member, to wit, William Findlay, from Pennsylvania, appeared, and took his seat in the House.
Monday, November 24.
Answer to the President's Speech.[54]
Mr. Nicholas then rose in defence of Mr. Madison's amendment. He thought the House should not bow so much to the Executive as to approve of his proceedings without knowing what they are. Gentlemen say that they do not mean an implicit approbation. Why, then, hazard words that infer it? He would go as far in thanking the President as any person with propriety could go.
Mr. Sedgwick insisted that the amendment of the member from Connecticut (Mr. Hillhouse) was preferable to the other. The President has said that his policy in regard to foreign nations is founded on justice. We approve of that. He recites his motives. They are also approved. Where, then, is the danger of expressing a general approbation? Would it be proper to give an approbation that cannot be appropriate, and that has no definite meaning? Mr. S. was far from designing to approve, explicitly or implicitly, what the House were not acquainted with. He only intended to convey a general sentiment of approbation; and he saw nothing more than this in the amendment of the gentleman from Connecticut.
Mr. Hillhouse never designed indiscriminate approbation; nor had he any secret meaning couched under the words of his amendment. When he had any thing to say to the House, he came honestly and told them in plain words what he would be at. He meant to express his applause of pacific and equitable measures. As to the question so often referred to, (the embassy of Mr. Jay,) he solemnly declared that it never was in his mind to express any thing about it. It would come before another body.
Mr. Madison imagined that, in his motion as now worded, every person might see substantial approbation.
Mr. Ames.—Jealousy may become habitual as well as confidence. Nothing but a habit of jealousy could have found any thing of a secret in this verbal distinction of your policy instead of a policy. The distinction was trifling, but, if there must be one, he preferred the amendment of Mr. Hillhouse. His reasons for this preference were so minute that they, perhaps, had little more value than what his imagination chose to give them. In the mean time, nobody will suppose that we do not approve of the policy of the President in preferring pacific measures, because the system of peace is now preferred all over the Continent of America.
Mr. Dayton rose to make a reply to "remarks so illiberal."
Mr. Ames here rose again and said that the gentleman certainly could not mean him.