justly seized at Hamburg, in neutral territory, and ought to be returned. The bold Wolfe Tone, Tandy's associate, and, like him, an officer of France, but not like him, arrested in a violated neutral territory, was neither demanded nor delivered. Condemned to death, he changed the mode of its execution by committing suicide. And shall my country, claiming to excel in humanity, as it excels in freedom, the nations of Europe, shall it be the first to avow a monstrous, unfounded pretension, and vindicate it by innocent blood? Shall it teach a lesson of barbarity to the hardened chieftains of slaughter, of which they were before ignorant? Shall it seek to protect foreigners from the vengeance of their sovereigns, at the cost of immolating its own citizens? Shall it doom a revolutionary Winchester, or a gallant Winder, to a shameful death, because it cannot save alien traitors from their legal fate? Think, for a moment, sir, on the consequences, and deem it not unworthy of you to regard them. True courage shuts not its eyes upon danger, or its result. It views steadily, and calmly resolves whether they ought to be encountered. Already has the Canadian war a character sufficiently cruel, as Newark, Buffalo and Niagara can testify. But when the spirit of ferocity shall have been maddened by the vapor steaming from the innocent blood that shall stagnate around every depot of prisoners, then will it become a war, not of savage, but of demoniac character. Your part of it may, perhaps, be ably sustained. Your way through the Canadas may be traced afar off, by the smoke of their burning villages. Your path may be marked by the blood of their furious peasantry. You may render your course audible by the frantic shrieks of their women and children. But your own sacred soil will also be the scene of this drama of fiends. Your exposed and defenceless seaboard, the seaboard of the south, will invite a terrible vengeance. That seaboard which has been shamefully neglected, and is at this moment without protection, has been already invaded. But an invasion, after the war shall have assumed its unmitigated form of carnage, and woe, and wickedness, must be followed with horrors which imagination can but faintly conceive. I will not trust myself to tell you all I feel, all my constituents feel, upon this subject; but I will say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, that when he alludes to the probability that an intestine foe may be roused to assassination and brutality, he touches a chord that vibrates to the very heart. Yes, sir, I live in a state whose misfortune it is to contain the materials out of which may be made such a foe-a foe that will be found everywhere-in our fields, our kitchens and our chambers; a foe, ignorant, degraded by habits of servitude, uncurbed by moral restraints, whom no recollections of former kindness will soften, and whom the remembrance of severity will goad to phrenzy; from whom nor age, nor infancy, nor beauty, will find reverence or pity; and whose subjugation will be but another word for extermination. Such a foe, sir, may be added to fill up the measure of our calamities. Let me not be misunderstood; let no gentleman misconceive my meaning. Do I state these consequences to intimidate or deter you? I think better of my countrymen. I hope and believe, in the language of Wilkinson to Provost, the Americans will not be deterred from pursuing what is right, by any dread of consequences. No, sir, I state them to rouse your attention and waken your scrutiny into the correctness of the course you are pursuing. If, on mature deliberation, you are sure that you are right, proceed, regardless of what may happen. Justum et tenacem propositi virum—~ Si fractus allabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinæ. The man resolv'd and steady to his trust, * From orbs convuls'd should all the planets fly, But reflect well, I conjure you, before reflection is too late. Let not passion or prejudice dictate the decision. If erroneous, its reversal may be decreed by a nation's miseries, and by the world's abhorrence. Mr. Chairman, turning from the gloomy view of the effects of the Canada war, my attention is arrested by another consequence likely to follow from it, on which I will not long detain you, but which is not less interesting nor less alarming. In proportion as gentlemen become heated in their pursuit of conquest, and are baffled in their efforts to overtake it, the object becomes more valuable in their estimation, and success is more identified with their pride. The conquest of Canada, contemplated as an easy sport, without a fixed design to keep it to secure, or surrender it to purchase rights, has from its difficulty swelled into an importance which causes it to be valued above all rights. Patriotism was relied on to fill the ranks of the invading army; but it did not sufficiently answer the call. These ranks, however, must be filled. Avarice is next resorted to. The most enormous price is bid for soldiers, that was ever offered in any age or country. Should this fail, what is the next scheme? There. is no reserve or concealment. It has been avowed that the next scheme is a conscription. It is known that this scheme was recommended, even at this session by the war department; and that it was postponed only to try first the effect of enormous bounty. The freemen of this country are to be drafted from the ranks of the militia, and forced abroad as military machines, to wage a war of conquest! Sir, I have been accustomed to consider the little share which I have in the constitution of these United States, as the most valuable patrimony I have to leave to those beings in whom I hope my name and remembrance to be perpetuated. But I solemnly declare, that if such a doctrine be ingrafted into the constitution, I shall regard it as without value, and care not for its preservation. Even in France, where man, inured to despotism, has become so passive and subservient, as almost to lose the facul 66 ty of feeling oppression, and the capacity to perceive it, even there, sir, the tyranny of conscription rouses him to the assertion of his innate freedom, to struggle against slavery in its most malignant form. No, sir, not the dread of all the severe punishments ordained for refractory conscripts, not the "peine du boulet," the travaux publiques," nor death itself, can stupify him into seeming submission. He yields only to absolute force, and is marched to the field of glory manacled and handcuffed. And is such a principle to be introduced into our benign, our free institution? Believe me, the attempt will be fatal-it cannot succeed but by military terror. It will be the signal for drawing the sword at home. It Americans are not fitted to be the slaves of a system of French conscription, the most detestable of the inventions of tyranny. Sir, I hear it whispered near me, this is not worse than the impressment of seamen. is worse, infinitely worse. Impressment forces seamen to serve in the public ships of their country, instead of pursuing their occupation in the merchant service. It changes their employment to one more rigorous, of longer continuance, of greater danger. But it is yet employment of the same kind. It is yet employment for which they are fitted by usage and education. But conscription is indiscriminate in the victims of its tyranny. The age, not the pursuit of the conscript, is the sole criterion of his fitness. Whatever be his habits, whatever his immediate views, whatever his designed occupation in life, a stern mandate tears him from the roof of his father, from the desk, the office, the plough, or the workshop, and he is carried far from home to fight, in foreign climes, the battles of ambition. But, sir, if conscription were not worse than impressment, I should not lose my objection to it. I am not prepared to assent to the introduction of either conscription or impressment into my country. For all the British territories in the western world, I would not fight for sailors' rights-yet rivet on our citizens a French conscription! Fight for rights on the ocean, and annihilate the most precious of all rights at home -the right of a freeman never to be forced out of his own country! How alarming is the infatuation of that zeal, which, in its ardor for attaining its object, tramples in the dust objects of infinitely higher price? What is the probability of success in this scheme of conquest, is a topic on which I mean not to enlarge. It is not necessary that I should, for others have ably discussed it. That you may take Upper Canada, that you may overrun the lower province I believe; but that you will take Quebec, while the mouth of the St. Lawrence is commanded by a hostile fleet, I cannot believe; if an opposite thought gets possession of my imagination, I find it springing from that impulse of the heart which makes me fancy victory perched on the standard of my country, and not the result of an exertion of the understanding. But, sir, if you should conquer the Canadas, subdue Nova Scotia, and possess yourself of all the British territories in America; if, after impoverishing your country by ruinous loans and grinding down your people by oppressive taxes, you should wade at last through the horrors of invasion, massacre of prisoners, a servile war, and a military conscription to the now darling object of your wishes, I pray you, sir, what is then to be done? What do you design to do with the conquered territory? We will keep it, say the gentlemen from Vermont and Pennsylvania, (Mr. Bradley and Mr. Ingersoll.) We will keep it, because it is an object with our people, because it will keep off Indian wars, and retribute us for the wrongs we have sustained. I believe, indeed, that, if conquered, there will be a powerful party to the north and west that will not consent to part with it, with whom it is an object. But how shall it be kept? As a conquered province? To retain it as such against the efforts of an exasperated, though conquered people within, and the exertions of a powerful, proud and irritated enemy without, that enemy master of the sea, always able to invade and succor the invaders, will re |