still am unable to see, they have felt themselves authorized to recommend the raising of standing armies, with a view, (as has been declared,) of immediate war -a war not of defence, but of conquest, of aggrandizement, of ambition-a war, foreign to the interests of this country; to the interests of humanity itself.

I know not how gentlemen, calling themselves republicans, can advocate such a war. What was their doctrine in 1798-9, when the command of the army, that highest of all possible trusts in any government, be the form what it may, was reposed in the bosom of the father of his country-the sanctuary of a nation's love-the only hope that never came in vain! When other worthies of the revolution--Hamilton, Pinkney and the younger Washington, men of tried patriotism, of approved conduct and valor, of untarnished honor, held subordinate command under him. Republicans were then unwilling to trust a standing army even to his hands, who had given proof that he was above all human temptation. Where now is the revolutionary hero, to whom you are about to confide this sacred trust? To whom will you confide the charge of leading the flower of our youth to the heights of Abraham? Will you find him in the person of an acquitted felon ? What! then you were unwilling to vote an army where such men, as have been named, held high command! When Washington himself was at the head, did you show such reluctance, feel such scruples; and are you now nothing loth, fearless of every consequence? Will you say that your provocations were less then than now-when your direct commerce was interdicted, your ambassadors hooted with derision from the French court, tribute demanded, actual war waged upon you?

Those, who opposed the army then, were indeed denounced as the partizans of France; as the same men, (some of them at least,) are now held up as the advocates of England: those firm and undeviating republicans, who then dared, and now dare, to cling

to the ark of the constitution, to defend it even at the expense of their fame, rather than surrender themselves to the wild projects of mad ambition. There is a fatality attending plenitude of power. Soon or late, some mania seizes upon its possessors; they fall from the dizzy height through giddiness. Like a vast estate, heaped up by the labor and industry of one man, which seldom survives the third generation; power, gained by patient assiduity, by a faithful and regular discharge of its attendant duties, soon gets above its own origin. Intoxicated with their own greatness, the federal party fell. Will not the same causes produce the same effects now as then? Sir, you may raise this army, you may build up this vast structure of patronage; but "lay not the flattering unction to your souls," you will never live to enjoy the succession. You sign your political death-warrant.

[Mr. Randolph here adverted to the provocation to hostilities from shutting up the Mississippi by Spain, in 1803; but more fully to the conduct of the House in 1805-6, under the strongest of all imaginable provocatives to war-the actual invasion of our country. He read various passages from the President's public message of December 3d, 1805, in which he detailed the injuries and insults which had been received from Spain. Mr. Randolph then referred to a subsequent message of the President upon the same subject, and read the report of the committee to whom the message was referred, reprehending, in strong terms, the conduct of Spain, and recommending the passage of a bill making provision for raising a sufficient number of troops "to protect the southern frontier of the United States from Spanish inroad and insult, and to chastise the same." Mr. Randolph then proceeded.]

The peculiar situation of the frontier, at that time insulted, alone induced the committee to recommend the raising of regular troops. It was too remote from the population of the country for the militia to act, in repelling and chastising Spanish incursion. New Orleans

and its dependencies, were separated by a vast extent of wilderness from the settlements of the old United States; filled with a disloyal and turbulent people, alien to our institutions, language and manners, and disaffected towards our government. Little reliance could be placed upon them, and it was plain, that if "it was the intention of Spain to advance on our possessions until she be repulsed by an opposing force," that force must be a regular army, unless we were disposed to abandon all the country south of Tennessee; that, "the protection of our citizens and the spirit and the honor of our country required that force should be interposed." Nothing remained but for the legislature to grant the only practicable means, or to shrink from the most sacred of all its duties; to abandon the soil and its inhabitants to the mercy of hostile invaders. Yet this report, moderate as it was, was deemed of too strong a character by the House. It was rejected: and, at the motion of a gentleman from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bidwell,) [who has since taken a great fancy also to Canada, and marched off thither, in advance of the committee of foreign relations,] "two millions of dollars were appropriated towards," (not in full of,) "any extraordinary expense which might be incurred in the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations;" in other words, to buy off, at Paris, Spanish aggressions at home. Was this fact given in evidence of our impartiality towards the belligerents? That to the insults and injuries and actual invasion of one of them, we opposed not bullets, but dollars; that to Spanish invasion we opposed money, whilst for British aggression on the high seas we had arms-offensive war? But Spain was then shielded, as well as instigated, by a greater power. Hence our respect for her. Had we at that time acted as we ought to have done in defence of our rights, of the natale solum itself, we should, I feel confident, have avoided that series of insult, disgrace and injury, which has been poured out upon us in long, unbroken succession. We would not

then raise a small regular force for a country, where the militia could not act, to defend our own territory; now, we are willing to levy a great army, for great it must be to accomplish the proposed object, for a war of conquest and ambition; and this, too, at the very entrance of the "northern hive," of the strongest part of the union.

An insinuation has fallen from the gentleman from Tennessee, (Mr. Grundy,) that the late massacre of our brethren on the Wabash was instigated by the British government. Has the President given any such information? Is it so believed by the administration? I have cause to believe the contrary to be the fact; that such is not their opinion. This insinuation is of the grossest kind—a presumption the most rash; the most unjustifiable. Show but good ground for it, I will give up the question at the threshold. I will be ready to march to Canada. It is, indeed, well calculated to excite the feelings of the western people particularly, who are not quite so tenderly attached to our red brethren as some of our modern philosophers; but it is destitute of any foundation, beyond mere surmise and suspicion. What would be thought, if, without any proof whatsoever, a member should rise in his place and tell us, that the massacre in Savannah-a massacre perpetrated by civilized savages with French commissions in their pockets, was excited by the French government? There is an easy and natural solution of the late transaction on the Wabash, in the well known character of the aboriginal savage of North America, without resorting to any such mere conjectural estimate. I am sorry to say, that, for this signal calamity and disgrace, the House is, in part, at least, answerable. Session after session, our table has been piled up with Indian treaties, for which the appropriations have been voted as a matter of course, without examination. Advantage has been taken of the spirit of the Indians, broken by the war which ended in the treaty of Grenville. Under the ascendency then acquired over them,

they have been pent up, by subsequent treaties, into nooks; straitened in their quarters by a blind cupidity, seeking to extinguish their title to immense wildernesses-for which, (possessing, as we do already, more land than we can sell or use,) we shall not have occasion, for half a century to come. It is our own thirst for territory, our own want of moderation, that has driven these sons of nature to desperation, of which we feel the effects. Although not personally acquainted with the late Col. Daveiss, I feel, I am persuaded, as deep and serious regret for his loss as the gentleman from Tennessee himself. I know him only through the representation of a friend of the deceased, (Mr. Rowan,) sometime a member of this House: a man, who, for native force of intellect, manliness of character, and high sense of honor, is not inferior to any that have ever set here. With him I sympathize in the severest calamity that could befal a man of his cast of character. Would to God, they were both now on this floor. From my personal knowledge of the one, I feel confident that I should have his support-and I believe (judging of him from the representation of our common friend,) of the other also.

I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality of the gentleman, in giving Canada to New York, in order to strengthen the northern balance of power; while, at the same time, he forewarns her, that the western scale must preponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the capitol in motion towards the falls of Ohio; after a short sojourn, taking its flight to the Mississippi, and finally alighting on Darien; which, when the gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of government for the new republic, (or empire,) of the two Americas! But it seems, that "in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly," and to give some color of consistency to that folly, we must now commit a greater. Really I cannot conceive of a weaker reason, of fered in support of a present measure, than the justification of a former folly. I hope we shall act a wise