American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) by Various

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About to enter, fellow-citizens, upon the exercise of duties which
comprehend every thing dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should
understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and
consequently, those which ought to shape its administration. I will
compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the
general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice
to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their
rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns,
and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the
preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional
vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a
jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe
corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where
peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the
decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which
there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate
parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in
peace, and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the
public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment
of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of
information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public
reason; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of
person, under the protection of the _habeas corpus_, and trial by juries
impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation,
which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of
revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our
heroes, have been devoted to their attainment; they should be the creed
of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by
which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from
them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our
steps, and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and
safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With
experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties
of this, the greatest of all, I have learned to expect that it will
rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man, to retire from this station
with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without
pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and
greatest revolutionary character, whose pre-eminent services had
entitled him to the first place in his country's love, and destined for
him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much
confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal
administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of
judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your
indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional; and your
support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would
not, if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage,
is a great consolation to me for the past; and my future solicitude will
be, to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance,
to conciliate that of others, by doing them all the good in my power,
and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying then on the patronage of your good-will, I advance with
obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become
sensible how much better choices it is in your power to make. And may
that infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our
councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace
and prosperity.

JOHN RANDOLPH,

--OF VIRGINIA' (BORN 1773, DIED 1833.)

ON THE MILITIA BILL--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DEC. 10, 1811.

MR. SPEAKER:

This is a question, as it has been presented to this House, of peace or
war. In that light it has been argued; in no other light can I consider
it, after the declarations made by members of the Committee of Foreign
Relations.

The Committee of Foreign Relations have, indeed, decided that the
subject of arming the militia (which has been pressed upon them as
indispensable to the public security) does not come within the scope of
their authority. On what ground, I have been, and still am, unable to
see, they have felt themselves authorized to recommend the raising of
standing armies, with a view (as has been declared) of immediate war--a
war not of defence, but of conquest, of aggrandizement, of ambition--a
war foreign to the interests of this country; to the interests of
humanity itself. * * *

I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality of the gentleman in
giving Canada to New York in order to strengthen the northern balance of
power; while, at the same time, he forewarns her that the western scale
must preponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the Capitol in motion
toward the falls of Ohio; after a short sojourn, taking its flight to
the Mississippi, and finally alighting at Darien; which, when the
gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of
government for the new republic (or empire) of the two Americas! But it
seems that in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly, and to give some color
of consistency to that folly we must now commit a greater.

I hope we shall act a wise part; take warning by our follies since we
have become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no
more. It is, 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
republicans 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 of 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 making them good citizens! Although I must
acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I
do not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It is a
dangerous experiment. We are 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 slave-holding States. I detest this
subornation of treason. No; if we must have them, let them fall by the
valor of our arms; by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims
of treacherous seduction.

I am not surprised at the war spirit which is 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 was 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, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own
votes, have 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 centum. 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 acknowledgment of our own want
of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by
it? Speculators; 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.

I am 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
ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? But our good friend, the
French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and 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 that favor? My imagination
shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to
reflect, whether they are 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 I ask what reparation
or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance,
after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great
deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I
will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of
Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at
Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of
"our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his
hire, and to put in a 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 sea-coast 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, Her home is on the deep!"

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, while men of the interior are revelling in conquest
and spoil. * * *

No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were
flocking around their prey--the carcass of a great military
establishment. Men of tainted reputation, of broken fortune (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
are ready to serve their country; but what man of spirit, or of
self-respect, will accept a commission in the present army? The
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) addressed himself yesterday
exclusively to the "Republicans of the House." I know not whether I may
consider myself as entitled to any part of the benefit of the honorable
gentleman's discourse. It belongs not, however, to that gentleman to
decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of republicanism,
I shall receive it from the fathers of the church, and not from the
junior apprentices of the law. I shall appeal to my worthy friends from
Carolina (Messrs. Macon and Stanford), "men with whom I have measured my
strength," by whose side I have fought during the reign of terror; for
it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It was
not at all to my 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! * * *

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 the general welfare; and whosoever
should embark it in a war of offence, would put it to a test which it is
by no means calculated to endure. Make it out that Great Britain has
instigated the Indians on a late occasion, and I am ready for battle,
but not for dominion. I am 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
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 are deeply interested. The upper
country of 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 have already felt so severely in the Apportionment
bill. * * *

Permit me now, sir, to call your attention to the subject of our black
population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is
with reluctance that I touch 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 delicacy from representing his true
situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the
occasion calls for it. What is the situation of the slave-holding
States? During the war of the Revolution, so fixed were their habits of
subordination, that while the whole country was overrun by the enemy,
who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an
insurrection of the slaves. During a 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 did not escape the general deluge. The French Revolution has
polluted even them. * * *

Men, dead to the operation of moral causes, have taken away from the
poor slave his habit 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 are shuddering for our own safety at home. I speak from facts, when I
say, that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond, that the
mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. I have been a
witness of some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia. * * *

Against whom are 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 are they made? By runaways chiefly
from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French
troubles. It is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must and ought,
with severity, to 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 other 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"; Melimelli 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 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 Shakespeare, 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? American resistance to British
usurpation has 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. I trust that none such
may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the
purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I
acknowledge the influence of a Shakespeare and a Milton upon my
imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sidney upon my
political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God I
possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a
Sherlock, and a Porteus upon my religion. This is a British influence
which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest
prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom have they been
suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my 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 toward the seat
of Col. Stewart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These
are they, who hold in such keen remembrance the outrages of the British
armies, from which many of them are 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 toward England: and yet, shall
they alone be 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?

But the outrages and injuries of England--bred up in the principles of
the Revolution--I can never palliate, much less defend them. I well
remember flying, with my mother and her new-born child, from Arnold and
Philips; and we were driven by Tarleton and other British Pandours from
pillar to post, while her husband was fighting the battles of his
country. The impression is indelible on my memory; and yet (like my
worthy old neighbor, who added seven buckshot to every cartridge at the
battle of Guilford, and drew fine sight at his man) I 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 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! * * *

Shall republicans become the instruments of him who has 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, instead of being as I am, my
memory clouded, my intellect stupefied, my strength and spirits
exhausted, I could not give utterance to that strong detestation which I
feel toward (above all other works of the creation) such characters as
Gengis, Tamerlane, Kouli-Khan, or Bonaparte. My instincts involuntarily
revolt at their bare idea. Malefactors of the human race, who have
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? * * *

I call upon those professing to be republicans to make good the
promises, held out by their republican predecessors, when they came into
power; promises which, for years afterward, they honestly, faithfully
fulfilled. We have vaunted of paying off the national debt, of
retrenching useless establishments; and yet have now become as
infatuated with standing armies, loans, taxes, navies, and war as ever
were the Essex Junto!

ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA.

JOSIAH QUINCY,

--OF MASSACHUSETTS.' (BORN 1772, DIED 1864.)

ON THE ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. 14, 1811.

MR. SPEAKER:

I address you, sir, with anxiety and distress of mind, with me, wholly
unprecedented. The friends of this bill seem to consider it as the
exercise of a common power; as an ordinary affair; a mere municipal
regulation, which they expect to see pass without other questions than
those concerning details. But, sir, the principle of this bill
materially affects the liberties and rights of the whole people of the
United States. To me it appears that it would justify a revolution in
this country; and that, in no great length of time it may produce it.
When I see the zeal and perseverance with which this bill has been urged
along its parliamentary path, when I know the local interests and
associated projects which combine to promote its success, all opposition
to it seems manifestly unavailing. I am almost tempted to leave, without
a struggle, my country to its fate. But, sir, while there is life, there
is hope. So long as the fatal shaft has not yet sped, if Heaven so will,
the bow may be broken and the vigor of the mischief-meditating arm
withered. If there be a man in this House or nation, who cherishes the
Constitution, under which we are assembled, as the chief stay of his
hope, as the light which is destined to gladden his own day, and to
soften even the gloom of the grave, by the prospects it sheds over his
children, I fall not behind him in such sentiments. I will yield to no
man in attachment to this Constitution, in veneration for the sages who
laid its foundations, in devotion to those principles which form its
cement and constitute its proportions. What then must be my feelings;
what ought to be the feelings of a man, cherishing such sentiments, when
he sees an act contemplated which lays ruin at the foot of all these
hopes? When he sees a principle of action about to be usurped, before
the operation of which the bands of this Constitution are no more than
flax before the fire, or stubble before the whirlwind? When this bill
passes, such an act is done; and such a principle is usurped.

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