Will you call upon her to leave your ports and harbors untouched, only just till you can return from Canada to defend them? The coast is to be left defenceless, whilst men of the interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. But grant for a moment, for mere argument's sake, that in Canada you touched the sinews of her strength, instead of removing a clog upon her resources—an encumbrance, but one, which, from a spirit of honor, she will vigorously defend. In what situation would you then place some of the best men of the nation? As Chatham and Burke, and the whole band of her patriots, prayed for her defeat in 1776, so must some of the truest friends to their country deprecate the success of our arms against the only power that holds in check the arch-enemy of mankind.
Mr. R. declared that the committee had out-stripped the Executive. In designating the power against whom this force was to be employed—as had most unadvisably been done in the preamble or manifesto with which the resolutions were prefaced—they had not consulted the views of the Executive; that designation was equivalent to an abandonment of all our claims on the French Government. No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were flocking round their prey, the carcass of a great Military Establishment—men of tainted reputation, of broken fortunes (if they ever had any) and of battered constitutions, "choice spirits, tired of the dull pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agencies and commissions; willing to doze in gross stupidity over the public fire; to light the public candle at both ends. Honorable men undoubtedly there were ready to serve their country, but what man of spirit, or of self-respect, would accept a commission in the present army?
The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) had addressed himself, yesterday, exclusively to the "Republicans of this House." Mr. R. knew not whether he might consider himself as entitled to any part of the benefit of the honorable gentleman's discourse. It belonged not, however, to that gentleman to decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of Republicanism, he should receive it from the fathers of the Church, and not from the junior apprentices of the law. He should appeal to his worthy friends from Carolina, (Messrs. Macon and Stanford,) "men with whom he had measured his strength," by whose side he had fought during the reign of terror, for it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It was not at all to his taste, that sort of Republicanism which was supported on this side of the Atlantic by the father of the sedition law, John Adams, and by Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism! of John Adams! and William Cobbett! Par nobile fratrum, now united as in 1798, whom the cruel walls of Newgate alone keep from flying to each other's embrace—but whom, in sentiment it is impossible to divide! Gallant crusaders in the holy cause of Republicanism! Such "Republicanism does indeed mean any thing or nothing."
Our people will not submit to be taxed for this war of conquest and dominion. The Government of the United States was not calculated to wage offensive foreign war—it was instituted for the common defence and general welfare; and whosoever should embark in a war of offence, would put it to a test which it was by no means calculated to endure. Make it out that Great Britain had instigated the Indians on the late occasion, and he was ready for battle; but not for dominion. He was unwilling, however, under present circumstances, to take Canada, at the risk of the constitution—to embark in common cause with France and be dragged at the wheels of the car of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman from Tennessee or Genesee, or Lake Champlain, there may be some prospect of advantage. Their hemp would bear a great price by the exclusion of foreign supply. In that too the great importers were deeply interested. The upper country on the Hudson and the Lakes would be enriched by the supplies for the troops, which they alone could furnish. They would have the exclusive market: to say nothing of the increased preponderance from the acquisition of Canada and that section of the Union, which the Southern and Western States had already felt so severely in the apportionment bill.
Mr. R. adverted to the defenceless state of our seaports, and particularly of the Chesapeake. A single spot only, on both shores, might be considered in tolerable security—from the nature of the port and the strength of the population—and that spot unhappily governed the whole State of Maryland. His friend, the late Governor of Maryland, (Mr. Lloyd,) at the very time he was bringing his warlike resolutions before the Legislature of the State, was liable, on any night, to be taken out of his bed, and carried off with his family, by the most contemptible picaroon. Such was the situation of many a family in Maryland and lower Virginia.
Mr. R. dwelt on the danger arising from the black population. He said he would touch this subject as tenderly as possible—it was with reluctance that he touched it at all—but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient—he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken humanity from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, where the occasion called for it. What was the situation of the slaveholding States? During the war of the Revolution, so fixed were their habits of subordination, that when the whole southern country was overrun by the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During the war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we therefore be unobservant spectators of the process of society, within the last twenty years—of the silent and powerful change wrought by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor slaves had not escaped the general deluge. The French Revolution had polluted even them. Nay, there had not been wanting men in that House, witness their Legislative Legendre, the butcher who once held a seat there, to preach upon that floor these imprescriptible rights to a crowded audience of blacks in the galleries—teaching them that they are equal to there masters; in other words, advising them to cut their throats. Similar doctrines were disseminated by peddlers from New England and elsewhere, throughout the southern country—and masters have been found so infatuated, as by their lives and conversation, by a general contempt of order, morality, and religion, unthinkingly to cherish these seeds of self-destruction to them and their families. What was the consequence? Within the last ten years, repeated alarms of insurrection among the slaves—some of them awful indeed. From the spreading of this infernal doctrine, the whole southern country had been thrown into a state of insecurity. Men dead to the operation of moral causes, had taken away from the poor slave his habits of loyalty and obedience to his master, which lightened his servitude by a double operation; beguiling his own cares and disarming his master's suspicions and severity; and now, like true empirics in politics, you are called upon to trust to the mere physical strength of the fetter which holds him in bondage. You have deprived him of all moral restraint, you have tempted him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, just enough to perfect him in wickedness; you have opened his eyes to his nakedness; you have armed his nature against the hand that has fed, that has clothed him, that has cherished him in sickness; that hand, which before he became a pupil of your school, he had been accustomed to press with respectful affection. You have done all this—and then show him the gibbet and the wheel, as incentives to a sullen, repugnant obedience. God forbid, sir, that the Southern States should ever see an enemy on their shores, with these infernal principles of French fraternity in the van! While talking of taking Canada, some of us were shuddering for our own safety at home. He spoke from facts, when he said that the night-bell never tolled for fire in Richmond that the mother did not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. He had been a witness of some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia.
Mr. R. then proceeded to notice the unjust and illiberal imputation of British attachments, against certain characters in this country, sometimes insinuated in that House, but openly avowed out of it. Against whom were these charges brought? Against men, who in the war of the Revolution were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. And by whom were they made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. He indignantly said—it is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must, and ought, with severity, be put down in this House, and, out of it, to meet the lie direct. We have no fellow feeling for the suffering and oppressed Spaniards! Yet even them we do not reprobate. Strange! that we should have no objection to any people or Government, civilized or savage, in the whole world. The great Autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his Divan of Pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity—"Turks, Jews, and Infidels;" Mellimelli, or the Little Turtle; barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed—representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus—our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence—against our fellow Protestants identified in blood, in language, in religion with ourselves. In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? And American resistance to British usurpation had not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots; not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, than by Chatham and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt Ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. He trusted that none such might ever exist among us—for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of Kings and Ministers of State.
He acknowledged the influence of a Shakspeare and Milton upon his imagination, of a Locke upon his understanding, of a Sidney upon his political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God! he possessed in common with that illustrious man—of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon his religion. This was a British influence which he could never shake off. He allowed much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom had they been suppressed when they ran counter to the interests of his country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French Revolution—who, in this abused and insulted country, have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in Republicanism, except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw. These are the patriots, who scruple not to brand with the epithet of tory the men (looking towards the seat of Col. Stuart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in so keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them were deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war, (for they are for the most part old enough to have borne arms,) and you strike them dumb—their lips are closed in eternal silence. If it were allowable to entertain partialities, every consideration of blood, language, religion, and interest, would incline us towards England; and yet, shall they be alone extended to France and her ruler, whom we are bound to believe a chastening God suffers as the scourge of a guilty world! On all other nations he tramples—he holds them in contempt—England alone he hates; he would, but he cannot despise her—fear cannot despise. And shall we disparage our ancestors?—shall we bastardize ourselves by placing them even below the brigands of St. Domingo? with whom Mr. Adams had negotiated a sort of treaty, for which he ought to have been and would have been impeached, if the people had not previously passed sentence of disqualification for their service upon him. This antipathy to all that is English must be French.
But the outrages and injuries of England, bred up in the principles of the Revolution, he could never palliate, much less defend them. He well remembered flying with his mother, and her new-born child, from Arnold and Phillips—and how they had been driven by Tarleton and other British pandoors from pillar to post, while her husband was fighting the battles of his country. The impression was indelible on his memory—and yet (like his worthy old neighbor, who added seven buck-shot to every cartridge at the battle of Guilford, and drew a fine sight at his man) he must be content to be called a tory by a patriot of the last importation. Let us not get rid of one evil (supposing it to be possible) at the expense of a greater—mutatis mutandis. Suppose France in possession of the British naval power—and to her the trident must pass should England be unable to wield it—what would be your condition? What would be the situation of your seaports and their seafaring inhabitants? Ask Hamburg, Lubec. Ask Savannah. What, sir! when their privateers are pent up in our harbors by the British bull-dogs, when they receive at our hands every rite of hospitality, from which their enemy is excluded, when they capture within our own waters, interdicted to British armed ships, American vessels; when such is their deportment towards you, under such circumstances, what could you expect if they were the uncontrolled lords of the ocean? Had those privateers at Savannah borne British commissions, or had your shipments of cotton, tobacco, ashes, and what not, to London and Liverpool, been confiscated, and the proceeds poured into the English Exchequer—my life upon it! you would never have listened to any miserable wire-drawn distinctions between "orders and decrees affecting our neutral rights," and "municipal decrees," confiscating in mass your whole property. You would have had instant war! The whole land would have blazed out in war.
And shall republicans become the instruments of him who had effaced the title of Attila to the "Scourge of God!" Yet even Attila, in the falling fortunes of civilization, had, no doubt, his advocates, his tools, his minions, his parasites in the very countries that he overran—sons of that soil whereon his horse had trod; where grass could never after grow. If perfectly fresh, Mr. Randolph said (instead of being as he was—his memory clouded, his intellect stupefied, his strength and spirits exhausted) he could not give utterance to that strong detestation which he felt towards (above all other works of the creation) such characters as Zingis, Tamerlane, Kouli-Khan, or Bonaparte. His instincts involuntarily revolted at their bare idea. Malefactors of the human race, who ground down man to a mere machine of their impious and bloody ambition. Yet, under all the accumulated wrongs, and insults, and robberies of the last of these chieftains, are we not in point of fact about to become a party to his views, a partner in his wars?