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SPEECH OF FISHER AMES,

ON

THE BRITISH TREATY,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED

STATES, APRIL 28, 1796.

On the 28th October, 1794, a treaty between Great Britain and the United States (known as "Jay's Treaty") was concluded and subsequently ratified by the president of the United States. On the 1st March, 1796, it was communicated to the house of representatives, in order that the necessary appropriations might be made to carry it into effect, in committee of the whole on the following resolution :-Resolved, as the opinion of this committee, that it is expedient to pass the laws necessary for carrying into effect the treaty with Great Britain. Mr. Ames spoke as

follows:

MR. CHAIRMAN,

I entertain the hope, perhaps a rash one, that my strength will hold me out to speak a few minutes.

In my judgment, a right decision will depend more on the temper and manner, with which we may prevail upon ourselves to contemplate the subject, than upon the development of any profound political principles, or any remarkable skill in the application of them. If we could succeed to neutralize our inclinations, we should find less difficulty than we have to apprehend in surmounting all our objections.

The suggestion, a few days ago, that the house manifested symptoms of heat and irritation, was made and retorted as if the charge ought to create surprise, and would convey reproach. Let us be more just to ourselves, and to the occasion. Let us not affect to deny the existence and the intrusion of some portion of prejudice and feeling into the debate, when, from the very structure of our nature, we ought to anticipate the circumstance as a probability, and when we are admonished by the evidence of our senses that it is the fact.

How can we make professions for ourselves, and offer exhortations to the house, that no influence should be felt but that of duty, and no guide respected but that of the understanding, while the peal to rally every passion of man is continually ringing in our ears?

Our understandings have been addressed, it is true, and with ability and effect; but, I demand, has any corner of the heart been left unexplored? It has been ransacked to find auxiliary arguments, and, when that attempt failed, to awaken the sensibilities that would require none. Every prejudice and feeling has been summoned to listen to some peculiar style of address; and yet we seem to believe, and to consider a doubt as an affront, that we are strangers to any influence but that of unbiased reason.

It would be strange, that a subject, which has roused in turn all the passions of the country, should be discussed without the interference of any of our own. We are men, and, therefore, not exempt from those passions: as citizens and representatives, we feel the interests that must excite them. The hazard of great interests cannot fail to agitate strong passions. We are not disinterested; it is impossible we should be dispassionate. The warmth of such feelings may becloud the judgment, and, for a time, pervert the understanding. But the public sensibility, and our own, has sharpened the spirit of inquiry, and given an animation to the debate. The public attention has been quickened to mark the progress of the discussion, and its judgment, often hasty and erroneous on first impressions, has become solid and enlightened at last. Our result will, I hope, on that account, be the safer and more mature, as well as more accordant with that of the nation. The only constant agents in political affairs are the passions of Shall we complain of our nature-shall we say that man ought to have been made otherwise? It is right already, because HE, from whom we derive our nature, ordained it so; and because thus made and thus acting, the cause of truth and the public good is the more surely promoted.

men.

But an attempt has been made to produce an influence of a nature more stubborn, and more unfriendly to truth. It is very unfairly pretended, that the constitutional right of this house is at stake, and to be asserted and preserved only by a vote in the negative. We hear it said, that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance against the design to nullify this assembly, and to make it a cipher in the government: that the president and senate, the numerous meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm of the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion and terror, to force the treaty down our throats, though we loathe it, and in spite of the clearest convictions of duty and

conscience.

It is necessary to pause here and inquire, whether suggestions of this kind be not unfair in their very texture and fabric, and pernicious in all their influences. They oppose an obstacle in the path of inquiry, not simply discouraging, but absolutely insurmountable. They will not yield to argument; for as they were not

reasoned up, they cannot be reasoned down. They are higher than a Chinese wall in truth's way, and built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is vain to argue; it is vain to say to this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea. For, I ask of the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument whose scope and object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask, further, when such attempts have been made, have they not failed of success? The indignant heart repels a conviction that is believed to debase it.

The self-love of an individual is not warmer in its sense, nor more constant in its action, than what is called, in French, l'esprit du corps, or the self-love of an assembly; that jealous affection which a body of men is always found to bear towards its own prerogatives and power. I will not condemn this passion. Why should we urge an unmeaning censure, or yield to groundless fears that truth and duty will be abandoned, because men in a public assembly are still men, and feel that esprit du corps which is one of the laws of their nature? Still less should we despond or complain, if we reflect, that this very spirit is a guardian instinct, that watches over the life of this assembly. It cherishes the principle of self-preservation, and without its existence, and its existence with all the strength we see it possess, the privileges of the representatives of the people, and mediately the liberties of the people, would not be guarded, as they are, with a vigilance that never sleeps, and an unrelaxing constancy and courage.

If the consequences, most unfairly attributed to the vote in the affirmative, were not chimerical, and worse, for they are deceptive, I should think it a reproach to be found even moderate in my zeal to assert the constitutional powers of this assembly; and whenever they shall be in real danger, the present occasion affords proof, that there will be no want of advocates and champions.

Indeed, so prompt are these feelings, and, when once roused, so difficult to pacify, that if we could prove the alarm was groundless, the prejudice against the appropriations may remain on the mind, and it may even pass for an act of prudence and duty to negative a measure which was lately believed by ourselves, and may hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of the house. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest suspicion of an assault.

While these prepossessions remain, all argument is useless. It may be heard with the ceremony of attention, and lavish its own

resources, and the patience it wearies, to no manner of purpose. The ears may be open; but the mind will remain locked up, and every pass to the understanding guarded.

Unless, therefore, this jealous and repulsive fear for the rights of the house can be allayed, I will not ask a hearing.

I cannot press this topic too far; I cannot address myself with too much emphasis to the magnanimity and candor of those who sit here, to suspect their own feelings, and, while they do, to examine the grounds of their alarm. I repeat it, we must conquer our persuasion, that this body has an interest in one side of the question more than the other, before we attempt to surmount our objections. On most subjects, and solemn ones too, perhaps in the most solemn of all, we form our creed more from inclination than evidence.

Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be only by way of supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible they have yielded too suddenly to their alarms for the powers of this house; that the addresses which have been made with such variety of forms, and with so great dexterity in some of them, to all that is prejudice and passion in the heart, are either the effects or the instruments of artifice and deception, and then let them see the subject once more in its singleness and simplicity.

It will be impossible, on taking a fair review of the subject, to justify the passionate appeals that have been made to us to struggle for our liberties and rights, and the solemn exhortations to reject the proposition, said to be concealed in that on your table, to surrender them forever. In spite of this mock solemnity, I demand, if the house will not concur in the measure to execute the treaty, what other course shall we take? How many ways of proceeding lie open before us?

In the nature of things there are but make the treaty, to observe it, or break it.

three; we are either to It would be absurd to say we will do neither. If I may repeat a phrase already so much abused, we are under coercion to do one of them, and we have no power, by the exercise of our discretion, to prevent the consequences of a choice.

By refusing to act, we choose. The treaty will be broken and fall to the ground. Where is the fitness, then, of replying to those who urge upon the house the topics of duty and policy, that they attempt to force the treaty down, and to compel this assembly to renounce its discretion, and to degrade itself to the rank of a blind and passive instrument in the hands of the treaty-making power? In case we reject the appropriation, we do not secure any greater liberty of action, we gain no safer shelter than before from the consequences of the decision. Indeed, they are not to be evaded. It is neither just nor manly to complain that the treaty-making

power has produced this coercion to act. It is not the art or the despotism of that power-it is the nature of things that compels. Shall we, dreading to become the blind instruments of power, yield ourselves the blinder dupes of mere sounds of imposture? Yet that word, that empty word, coercion, has given scope to an eloquence, that, one would imagine, could not be tired, and did not choose to be quieted.

Let us examine still more in detail the alternatives that are before us, and we shall scarcely fail to see, in still stronger lights, the futility of our apprehensions for the power and liberty of the house.

If, as some have suggested, the thing called a treaty is incomplete-if it has no binding force or obligation—the first question is, Will this House complete the instrument, and, by concurring, impart to it that force which it wants?

The doctrine has been avowed, that the treaty, though formally ratified by the executive power of both nations, though published as a law for our own by the president's proclamation, is still a mere proposition submitted to this assembly, no way distinguishable, in point of authority or obligation, from a motion for leave to bring in a bill, or any other original act of ordinary legislation. This doctrine, so novel in our country, yet so dear to many, precisely for the reason, that, in the contention for power, victory is always dear, is obviously repugnant to the very terms as well as the fair interpretation of our own resolutions (Mr. Blount's). We declare, that the treaty-making power is exclusively vested in the president and senate, and not in this house. Need I say, that we fly in the face of that resolution, when we pretend, that the acts of that power are not valid until we have concurred in them? It would be nonsense, or worse, to use the language of the most glaring contradiction, and to claim a share in a power which we at the same time disclaim as exclusively vested in other depart

ments.

What can be more strange than to say, that the compacts of the president and senate with foreign nations are treaties, without our agency, and yet those compacts want all power and obligation, until they are sanctioned by our concurrence? It is not my design, in this place, if at all, to go into the discussion of this part of the subject. I will, at least for the present, take it for granted, that this monstrous opinion stands in little need of remark, and if it does, lies almost out of the reach of refutation.

But, say those who hide the absurdity under the cover of ambiguous phrases, have we no discretion? and if we have, are we not to make use of it in judging of the expediency or inexpediency of the treaty? Our resolution claims that privilege, and we cannot surrender it without equal inconsistency and breach of duty.

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