had become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no more. It was indeed high time to give over such preposterous language and proceedings. This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine that Republics are destitute of ambition-that they are addicted to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people. But it seems this is to be a holiday campaign-there is to be no expense of blood, or treasure, on our part-Canada is to conquer herself-she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity. The people of that country are first to be seduced from their allegiance, and converted into traitors, as preparatory to the making them good citizens. Although he must acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, he did not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It was a dangerous experiment. We were to succeed in the French mode by the system of fraternization-all is French! but how dreadfully it might be retorted on the Southern and Western slaveholding States. He detested this subornation of treason. No-if he must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms, by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction. He was not surprised at the war spirit which was manifesting itself in gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country had been most unwisely brought into collision with the great Powers of Europe. By a series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible to every rational, soberminded man, the Southern planters, by, their own votes, had succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing-and in raising the price of blankets, (of which a few would not be amiss in a Canadian campaign,) coarse woollens, and every article of first necessity, three or four hundred per cent. And now that, by our own acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgement of our own want of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by it? Specula tors-a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery-commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is their blood, their taxes, that must flow to support it. But gentlemen avowed that they would not go to war for the carrying trade-that is, for any other but the direct export and import trade that which carries our native products abroad, and brings back the return cargo; and yet they stickle for our commercial rights, and will go to war for them! He wished to know, in point of principle, what difference gentlemen could point out between the abandonment of this or of that maritime right? Do gentlemen assume the lofty port and tone of chivalrous redressors of maritime wrongs, and declare their readiness to surrender DECEMBER, 1811. every other, maritime right, provided they may remain unmolested in the exercise of the humble privilege of carrying their own produce abroad, and bringing back a return cargo? Do you make this declaration to the enemy at the outset ? Do you state the minimum with which you will be contented, and put it in her power to close with your proposals at her option; give her the basis of a treaty ruinous and disgraceful beyond example and expression? and this too after having turned up your noses in disdain at the treaties of Mr. Jay and Mr. Monroe! Will you say to England, "end the war when you please, give us the direct trade in our own produce, we are content?" Bu; what will the merchants of Salem, and Boston, and New York, and Philadelphia, and Baltimore; the men of Marblehead and Cape Cod, say to this? Will they join in a war professing to have for its object what they would consider (and justly too) as the sacrifice of their maritime rights, yet affecting to be a war for the protection of commerce? 1 1 He was gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and destructive consequences of the non-importation law-confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold when it was enacted. And will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and rainous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? "But our good friend the French Emperor stands in the way of its repeal," and as we cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his love for the Americans, we must, in point of fact, become parties to his war. "Who can be so cruel as to refuse him this favor?" His imagination shrunk from the miseries of such a connexion. He called upon the House to reflect whether they were not about to abandon all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages, “insults and injuries" of the French Government, to give up our claim for plundered millions; and asked what reparation or atonement they could expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they should have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We had by our own wise (he would not say wise-acre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we began to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much towards its improvement by the exercise of our restrictive energies," we began to think the laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in claim for our portion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer to our point? As his Minister said to the King of Epirus," may we not as well take our bottle of wine before as after this exploit ?" Go! march to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers-the whole line of seacoast from Machias to St. Mary's, unprotected! You have taken Quebec-have you conquered England? Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador? "Her march is on the mountain wave, 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 archenemy of mankind. H. OF R. 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 it 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 a common cause with France and be dragged at the wheels of the car of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman from Tennessee or Gennessee, 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. declared, that the committee had outstripped 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 Estab- Mr. R. adverted to the defenceless state of our lishment-men of trained reputation, of broken seaports, and particularly of the Chesapeake. A fortunes (if they ever had any) and of battered single spot only, on both shores, might be considconstitutions, choice spirits, tired of the dull pur-ered in tolerable security-from the nature of the suits 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 anything or nothing." Our people will not submit to be taxed for this 12th CoN. 1st SESS.-15 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 progress of society within the last twenty years-of the silent but 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 galleriesteaching them that they are equal to their masters; in other words, advising them to cut their throats. Similar doctrines were disseminated by pedlers from New England and elsewhere, throughout the Southern country—and masters had 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 nightbell 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. How had we shown our sympathy with the patriots of Spain, or with her American provinces? By seizing on one of them, her claim to which we had formerly respected, as soon as the parent country was embroiled at home. Was it thus we yielded them assistance against the arch-fiend who is grasping at the sceptre of the civilized world. The object of France is as much Spanish America as Old Spain herself. Much as he hated a standing army he could almost find it in his heart to vote one, could it be sent to the assistance of the Spanish patriots. Mr. R. then proceeded to notice the unjust and illiberal imputation of British attachments, against certain characters in this country, sometimes in DECEMBER, 1811. sinuated 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 DECEMBER, 1811. Foreign Relations. H. of R. 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. 66 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 stupified, 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? ran counter to the interests of his country? By | wards you, under such circumstances, what could Washington. By whom, would you listen to you expect if they were the uncontrolled lords of them, are they most keenly felt? By felons es- the ocean? Had those privateers at Savannah caped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kil- borne British commissions-or had your shipmainham, since the breaking out of the Frenchments of cotton, tobacco, ashes, and what not, to 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 al lowable 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 newborn child, from Arnold and Phillips-and 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 buli-dogs, when they receive at our hands every He called upon those professing to be Republirite of hospitality, from which their enemy is cans to make good the promises held out by their excluded when they capture within our own Republican predecessors when they came into waters, interdicted to British armed ships, Amer-power-promises, which for years afterwards they ican vessels; when such is their deportment to- | had honestly, faithfully fulfilled. We had vaunted But before this miserable force of ten thousand men was raised to take Canada, he begged them to look at the state of defence at home-to count the cost of the enterprise before it was set on foot, not when it might be too late-when the best blood of the country should be spilt, and nought but empty coffers left to pay the cost. Are the bounty lands to be given in Canada? It might lessen his repugnance to that part of the system, to granting these lands, not to those miserable wretches who sell themselves to slavery for a few dollars and a glass of gin, but in fact to the clerks in our offices, some of whom, with an income of fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars, lived at the rate of four or five thousand, and yet grew rich-who perhaps at that moment were making out blank assignments for these land rights. He would beseech the House, before they ran their heads against this post, Quebec, to count the cost. His word for it, Virginia planters would not be taxed to support such a war-a war which must aggravate their present distresses; in which they had not the remotest interest. Where is the Montgomery, or even the Arnold, or the Burr, who is to march to Point Levi? of paying off the national debt, of retrenching useless establishments; and yet had now become as infatuated with standing armies, loans, taxes, navies, and war, as ever were the Essex Junto. What Republicanism is this? Mr. RANDOLPH apologized for his very desultory manner of speaking. He regretted that his bodily indisposition had obliged him to talk perhaps somewhat too wildly; yet he trusted some method would be found in his madness-on the other resolution he should perhaps be obliged to trouble the House again. Mr. JOHNSON proceeded to reply, but had not gone far before he sat down, to afford Mr. RANDOLPH an opportunity to explain; after which an adjournment was moved and carried. WEDNESDAY, December 11. Mr. DAWSON, from the committee appointed on the ninteenth ultimo, presented a bill to amend the act providing for persons disabled by known wounds received in the Revolutionary war; which was read, and committed to a Committee of the Whole on Monday next. Mr. JENNINGS presented petitions from sundry inhabitants of the Indiana Territory, praying that a law may be passed to prohibit the inter ference of the United States' officers in elections held in said Territory, and that they may be authorized to elect their Delegate to this House at the time of the election of the members composing their Territorial Legislature.-Referred to a select committee. Mr. JENNINGS, Mr. NELSON, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. NEWBOLD, Mr. SEVIER, Mr. ORMSBY, and Mr. REED, were appointed the committee. Mr. RANDOLPH, from the committee appointed as managers, on behalf of this House, of the conference on the subject of the disagreeing votes of the two Houses of Congress on the Senate's amendment to the bill, entitled "An act for the apportionment of Representatives among the several States, according to the third enumeration," 'reported: "That the committee had held a conference with the managers appointed on the part of the Senate. That the following propositions were submitted by the committee, to the managers of the Senate: To fix the ratio at 34,000, 33,000, 40,000, All of which being promptly rejected by the committee of the Senate, your committee, as a last effort at accommodation, proposed 36,000, as the medium between the two numbers adopted by the two Houses respect ively; which was also rejected as the others had been, without any discussion whatever, on the part of the managers of the Senate. No proposition being submitted on the other side to your committee, the conference was broken up, and the joint committee of the two Houses finally separated without coming to any agree ment." Mr. NEWTON, from the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures, presented a bill authorizing the refunding the duties paid on the importation of certain copper articles; which was read DECEMBER, 1811. FOREIGN RELATIONS, The House resumed the consideration of the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations. Mr. JOHNSON said he rose to thank the committee for the report which was offered to the House, and the resolutions which were recommended; though the measures fell short of his wishes, and, he believed, of public expectation. The ulterior measures, however, promised by the committee satisfied his mind, and he should give the report his warm support. The chairman had given the views of the committee. The expulsion of the British from their North American possessions, and granting letters of marque and reprisal against Great Britain are contemplated. Look at the Message of the President. At a moment least to be expected, when France had ceased to violate our neutral rights, and the olive branch was tendered to Great Britain, her Orders in Council were put into a more rigorous execution. Not satisfied with refusing a redress for wrongs committed on our coasts and in the mouths of our harbors, our trade is annoyed, and our national rights invaded; and, to close the scene of insolence and injury, regardless of our moderation and our justice, she has brought home to the "threshold of our territory," measures of actual war. As the love of peace has so long produced forbearance on our part, while commercial cupidity has increased the disposition to plunder on the part of Great Britain, I feel rejoiced that the hour of resistance is at hand, and that the President, in whom the people have so much confidence, has warned us of the perils that await them, and has exhorted us to put on the armor of defence, to gird on the sword, and assume the manly and bold attitude of war. He recommends filling up the ranks of the present Military Establishment, and to lengthen the term of service; to raise an auxiliary force for a more limited time; to authorize the acceptance of volunteers, and provide for calling out detachments of militia as circumstances may require. For the first time since my entrance into this body, there now seems to be but one opinion with a great majority-that with Great Britain war is inevitable; that the hopes of the sanguine as to a returning sense of British justice have expired; that the prophecies of the discerning have failed; and, that her infernal system has driven us to the brink of a second revolution, as important as the first. Upon the Wabash, through the influence of British agents, and within our territorial sea by the British navy, the war has already com |