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. * * *