treaty that is binding in good faith. We claim, however, say the gentlemen, a right to judge of the expediency of treaties; that is the constitutional province of our discretion. Be it so. What follows? Treaties, when adjudged by us to be inexpedient, fall to the ground, and the public faith is not hurt. This, incredible and extravagant as it may seem, is asserted. The amount of it, in plainer language, is this; the president and senate are to make national bargains, and this house has nothing to do in making them. But bad bargains do not bind this house, and of inevitable consequence, do not bind the nation. When a national bargain, called a treaty, is made, its binding force does not depend on the making, but upon our opinion that it is good. As our opinion on the matter can be known and declared only by ourselves, when sitting in our legislative capacity, the treaty, though ratified, and as we choose to term it, made, is hung up in suspense, till our sense is ascertained. We condemn the bargain, and it falls, though, as we say, our faith does not. We approve a bargain as expedient, and it stands firm, and binds the nation. Yet, even in this latter case, its force is plainly not derived from the ratification by the treaty-making power, but from our approbation. Who will trace these inferences, and pretend, that we have no share, according to the argument, in the treaty-making power? These opinions, nevertheless, have been advocated with infinite zeal and perseverance. Is it possible that any man can be hardy enough to avow them, and their ridiculous consequences?

Let me hasten to suppose the treaty is considered as already made, and then the alternative is fairly present to the mind, whether we will observe the treaty, or break it. This, in fact, is the naked question.

If we choose to observe it with good faith, our course is obvious. Whatever is stipulated to be done by the nation,

must be complied with. Our agency, if it should be requisite, cannot be properly refused. And I do not see why it is not as obligatory a rule of conduct for the legis lature as for the courts of law.

I cannot lose this opportunity to remark, that the coercion, so much dreaded and declaimed against, appears at length to be no more than the authority of principles, the despotism of duty. Gentlemen complain we are forced to act in this way; we are forced to swallow the treaty. It is very true, unless we claim the liberty of abuse, the right to act as we ought not. There is but one right way open for us: the laws of morality and good faith have fenced up every other. What sort of liberty is that, which we presume to exercise against the authority of those laws? It is for tyrants to complain, that principles are restraints, and that they have no liberty, so long as their despotism has limits. These principles will be unfolded by examining the remaining question:

Shall we break the Treaty?

The treaty is bad, fatally bad, is the cry. It sacrifices the interest, the honour, the independence of the United States, and the faith of our engagements to France. If we listen to the clamour of party intemperance, the evils are of a number not to be counted, and of a nature not to be borne, even in idea. The language of passion and exagge ration may silence that of sober reason in other places; it has not done it here. The question here is, whether the treaty be really so very fatal, as to oblige the nation to break its faith. I admit that such a treaty ought not to be executed. I admit that self-preservation is the first law of society, as well as of individuals. It would perhaps be deemed an abuse of terms to call that a treaty, which violates such a principle. I wave also, for the present, any inquiry, what departments shall represent the nation, and annul the stipulations of a treaty. I content myself with

pursuing the inquiry, whether the nature of the compact be such as to justify our refusal to carry it into effect. A treaty is the promise of a nation. Now, promises do not always bind him that makes them.

But I lay down two rules, which ought to guide us in this case. The treaty must appear to be bad not merely in the petty details, but in its character, principle, and mass: and in the next place, this ought to be ascertained by the decided and general concurrence of the enlightened public. I confess there seems to me something very like ridicule thrown over the debate by the discussion of the articles in detail.

The undecided point is, shall we break our faith? And while our country, and enlightened Europe, await the issue with more than curiosity, we are employed to gather, piecemeal, and article by article, from the instrument, a justification for the deed by trivial calculations of commercial profit and loss. This is little worthy of the subject, of this body, or of the nation. If the treaty is bad, it will appear to be so in its mass. Evil to a fatal extreme, if that be its tendency, requires no proof: it brings it. Extremes speak for themselves, and make their own law. What if the direct voyage of American ships to Jamaica with horses or lumber might net one or two per cent. more than the present trade to Surinam, would the proof of the fact avail any thing in so grave a question as the violation of the public engagements?

It is in vain to allege, that our faith plighted to France is violated by this new treaty. Our prior treaties are expressly saved from the operation of the British treaty. And what do those mean, who say, that our honour was forfeited by treating at all, and especially by such a treaty? Justice, the laws, and practice of nations, a just regard for peace as a duty to mankind, and the known wish of our citizens, as well as that self-respect which required it of

the nation to act with dignity and moderation, all these forbad an appeal to arms before we had tried the effect of negotiation. The honour of the United States was saved, not forfeited by treating. The treaty itself, by its stipulations for the posts, for indemnity, and for a due observation of our neutral rights, has justly raised the character of the nation. Never did the name of America appear in Europe with more lustre, than upon the event of ratifying this instrument. The fact is of a nature to overcome all contradiction.

But the independence of the country-we are colonists again. This is the cry of the very men who tell us, that France will resent our exercise of the rights of an independent nation to adjust our wrongs with an aggressor, without giving her the opportunity to say, those wrongs shall subsist and shall not be adjusted. This is an admirable specimen of independence. The treaty with Great Britain, it cannot be denied, is unfavourable to this strange sort of independence.

Few men of any reputation for sense among those who say the treaty is bad, will put that reputation so much at hazard as to pretend, that it is so extremely bad as to warrant and require a violation of the public faith. The proper ground of the controversy, therefore, is really unoccupied by the opposers of the treaty; as the very hinge of the debate is on the point, not of its being good or otherwise, but whether it is intolerably and fatally pernicious. If loose and ignorant declaimers have any where asserted the latter idea, it is too extravagant, and too solidly refuted, to be repeated here. Instead of any attempt to expose it still further, I will say, and I appeal with confidence to the candour of many opposers to the treaty to acknowledge, that, if it had been permitted to go into operation silently, like our other treaties, so little alteration of any sort would be made by it in the great mass of VOL. II.

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our commercial and agricultural concerns, that it would not be generally discovered by its effects to be in force, during the term for which it was contracted. I place considerable reliance on the weight men of candour will give to this remark, because I believe it to be true, and little short of undeniable. When the panic dread of the treaty shall cease, as it certainly must, it will be seen through another medium. Those who shall make search into the articles for the cause of their alarms, will be so far from finding stipulations that will operate fatally, that they will discover few of them that will have any lasting operation at all. Those which relate to the disputes between the two countries will spend their force upon the subjects in dispute, and extinguish them. The commercial articles are more of a nature to confirm the existing state of things, than to change it. The treaty alarm was purely an address to the imagination and prejudices of the citizens, and not on that account the less formidable. Objections that proceed upon error in fact or calculation, may be traced and exposed; but such as are drawn from the imagination, or addressed to it, elude definition, and return to domineer over the mind, after having been banished from it by truth.

I will not so far abuse the momentary strength that is lent to me by the zeal of the occasion, as to enlarge upon the commercial operation of the treaty. I proceed to the second proposition, which I have stated as indispensably requisite to a refusal of the performance of a treaty: will the state of public opinion justify the deed?

No government, not even a despotism, will break its faith, without some pretext; and it must be plausible, it must be such as will carry the public opinion along with it. Reasons of policy, if not of morality, dissuade even Turkey and Algiers from breaches of treaty in mere wantonness of perfidy, in open contempt of the reproaches