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something more than mere words to general La Fayette, not a voice would be raised. But, sir, I am disappointed; and it is therefore the irksome task of this committee to go into detail, and to show how much we are absolutely indebted to this great man.

It appears from some documents, sir, in possession of the committee, that the general, during six years of our revolutionary war, sacrificed one hundred and forty thousand dollars of his private fortune, in the service of this country. And how sir, was this sacrifice made? Under what circumstances? Was he one of our own citizens-one of those whose lives and fortunes were necessarily exposed during the vicissitudes of a contest for the right of self-government? No, sir, no such thing. He tore himself away from his country and his home, to fight the battles of freedom in a foreign land, and to make common cause with a people to whom he owed no duty. Nor was he satisfied with the devotion of his personal services. It is a matter of record on the pages of your history, that he armed a regiment for you: that he sent a vessel laden with arms and munitions of war for you: that he put shoes on the feet of your barefoot and suffering soldiers. For all these services he asked no recompense-he received none. He spent his fortune for you; he shed his blood for you; and without acquiring any thing but a claim upon your gratitude, he impoverished himself.

Now

And now, sir, what would be thought of us in Europe, if, after all that has passed, we should fail to make a generous and liberal provision for our venerable guest? We have, under circumstances calculated to give to the event great celebrity, invited him to our shores. We have received him with the utmost enthusiasm. The people have every where greeted him in the warmest terms of gratitude and affection. what will be thought of us in Europe, and, what is much more important, how shall we deserve to be thought of, if we send back our venerable guest without any more substantial proof of our gratitude, than vague expressions of regard? You have made him a spectacle for the world to gaze on. He cannot go back to France and become the private citizen he was when he left it. You have, by the universal homage of your hearts and tongues, made his house a shrine, to which every pilgrim of liberty, from every quarter of the world, will repair. At least, let him not, after this, want the means of giving welcome to the Americans, who, whenever they visit the shores of France, will repair in crowds to his hospitable mansion, to testify their veneration to the illustrious compatriot of their fathers. I regret,

sir, that I have been compelled to say thus much upon the subject. But, sir, I have full confidence that there cannot in this house, there cannot in this nation, be but one universal feeling of gratitude and affection for La Fayette.

37. BATTLE THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.—Henry.

Mr. President,-I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I have no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation—the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain an enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains, which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we any thing new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done every thing that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned- -we have remonstrated-we have supplicated-we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry

and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne.

In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-if we wish to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must fight!-I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us.

38. THE INSTABILITY OF HUMAN GOVERNMENTS.-Rutledge.

Sir, The gentleman from Virginia has repeated the observation of his colleague, that the people are capable of taking care of their own rights, and do not want a corps of judges to protect them. Sir, human nature is the same every where; and man is precisely the same sort of being in the new world that he is in the old. The citizens of other republics were as wise and valiant, and far more powerful than we are. The gentleman knows full well, that wherever the Roman standard was unfurled, its motto, "Senatus Populusque Romani," proclaimed to a conquered world, that they were governed by the senate and the people of Rome. But now, sir, the Roman lazaroni, who, crouching at the gate of his prince's palace, begs the offals of his kitchen, would never know that his ancestors had been free, nor that the people had counted for any thing in Rome; or that Rome ever had her senate, did he not read of them on the broken friezes and broken columns of the ruined temples, whose fragments now lie scattered over the Roman forum. Sir, the mournful histories of the republics of Rome and Greece, are not the only beacons which warn us of the dangers of instability and innovation. All Europe was once free. But where now is the diet of Sweden? Where are the states of Holland and Portugal, and the republics of Switzerland and Italy? The people of those countries were once free and happy, but their governments, for the want of some protecting check, some inherent principle to defend themselves, have all been subverted; they have all traveled the same road; it is as plain as a turn

pike it is pointed out by the ruins of other republics. Every where the same causes have produced the same effects. The honorable gentleman says, he does not want to seek examples across the Atlantic. Sir, is this wise-are we to shut our eyes to the light of history, and turn away from the voice of experience? Sir, the untutored Indian marks on his tomahawk great events as they pass, and augurs what will happen from knowing what has happened; and shall we travel on without noticing the finger-boards erected by historians for our security? The gentleman censures our having noticed France, and read a passage from a speech of the illustrious Washington, where he called the French a great and wise people. What has been the fate of this gallant people? Where is their constitution? We have seen La Fayette in the Champ de Mars, at the head of fifty thousand warriors, who, with one hand grasping their swords, and the other laid on the altar, swore, in the presence of Almighty God, they never would desert their constitution. Through all the departments of France, similar pledges were given. Frenchmen received their constitution as the followers of Mahomet did the alcoran, and thought it came to them from heaven. They swore on their standards and their sabres, never to abandon it. But, sir, this constitution has vanished; their swords, which were to have formed a rampart around it, are now worn by the consular janizaries, and the republican stan ards are among the trophies which decorate the vaulted ro of the consul's palace.

39.

EXTENT OF COUNTRY NOT DANGEROUS TO THE UNION.
-Madison.

I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, these considerations, in full confidence that the good sense which has so often marked your decisions, will allow them their due weight and effect; and that you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appearance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scenes into which the advocates for disunion would conduct you. Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow-citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. Hearken not

to the voice, which petulantly tells you, that the form of government recommended for your adoption, is a novelty in the political world; that it never yet has had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. No, my countrymen; shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys: the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lesson of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the revolution, for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established, of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment, have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils; must, at best, have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabric of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the union, this was the most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new-modeled by the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide.

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