But, as opinions on this article are changed, and we are called to act for our country, it becomes us to explore the dangers that will attend its peace, and to avoid them if we can.

Is there any thing in the prospect of the interior state of the country to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war?  Would not the shock of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government?  Is this a chimera?  Is it going off the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments?  Two branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside.  How is this disorder in the machine to be rectified?  While it exists its movements must stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary one of the people?  And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the constitution and the public order?  Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue?  They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal—­as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissentions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness.  Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better discernment than mine.  They can see the bright aspects and the happy consequences of all this array of horrors.  They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or resources, in “the calm lights of mild philosophy.”

But whatever they may anticipate as the next measure of prudence and safety, they have explained nothing to the house.  After rejecting the treaty, what is to be the next step?  They must have foreseen what ought to be done; they have doubtless resolved what to propose.  Why then are they silent?  Dare they not avow their plan of conduct, or do they wait till our progress toward confusion shall guide them in forming it?

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which it is yet in our power to realize.  Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance—­without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved, it?  Will he not feel some dread that a change of system will reverse the scene?  The well-grounded fears of our citizens in 1794 were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten.  Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered, at that day, as a happy escape from the calamity?  The great interest and the general