the efforts of the chief of this party. When it was adopted, he did indeed defend it, in his official character; but he has taken care to declare his abhorrence of it, and the French minister did not fail to accuse him of duplicity, for having written officially in its defence. While officially defended by their chief, the party themselves assailed it with the most persevering violence. The haranguers exclaimed, the self-created societies passed resolutions, the presses devoted to the party teemed with abuse, and that, in particular, which was under the immediate direction of the chief, poured forth one continued torrent of virulent invective. Afraid to attack the head of the executive department himself, whose tried virtue, whose splendid services, whose great and well earned popularity, could not fail to rouse the public indignation, against any who might impeach the purity of his conduct, all the shafts were levelled at the counsellor, by whose advice the system was supposed to have been adopted, and by whose talents it was ably supported. It was every where declared, and every where most industriously propagated, that this person had enslaved the mind of the President, and misled his judgment. Every where, by every press and every club, was this person branded as a speculator, a thief, a plunderer of the public treasury, which was under his superintendence, a wretch in the pay of England, in fine, the most profligate of traitors, and the most dangerous of public enemies. These calumnies, asserted within these walls, circulated by members of this House, 'were industriously wafted from state to state, for the purpose of overwhelming with obloquy and public hatred, the author and prop of the neutral system, as an essential step towards the destruction of the system itself. When the public mind was thought to be sufficiently prepared, a direct attack was made on him in this House, for the purpose of driving him from office, so that the President, deprived of his counsels, might the more easily be brought to concur in the designs of the

war party and of France. The charges before circulated in a vague and indirect form, were reduced to a specific accusation, and brought before this House, as the grounds of a vote of impeachment. But although the party had met with some success, while they confined themselves to their strong hold, to the " Ambiguas in vulgum spargere voces" which I mentioned in the beginning of my observations, yet when they ventured to fight on the open plain of fact and proof, they were totally routed; when their vague calumnies assumed the shape of resolutions, they were easily refuted. Every charge was repelled by a vast majority of this House; and the wise and virtuous statesman to whom his country is so much indebted, rising triumphant from the contest, established his fame and his system on a basis more solid than ever: like some mighty oak, whose roots are more strongly fixed, and new vigor added to its growth, by those storms which seem to threaten its overthrow.

Thus the war party were again discomfited; and in spite of all their efforts, aided by the efforts of the French minister, a system of fair and impartial neutrality, calculated to preserve justice to all, and keep peace with all, was completely established.

Though beaten, however, Mr. Chairman, they were not subdued; nor could they be induced to relinquish their favorite object of war and alliance. They waited for a favorable opportunity of renewing the attack, and that opportunity the unjust aggressions of England on our trade too soon supplied. These aggressions, joined to the remembrance of our former contest with that power and the resentments remaining from her former injuries, raised a flame of indignation throughout the country, which pervaded all classes and distinctions of people, and prepared the public mind for measures of hostility. The occasion was seized by the war party, and used with an activity and zeal which gave them the fairest prospects of success. The at

tempts were not direct; because, in that case, the people might have been brought to reflect.

The great object then, as before, was war against England, and alliance with France; but not one word was said about war or alliance, words which might have created alarm, and given rise to hesitation. But measures were proposed, the direct and inevitable tendency of which was to widen the breach with England, and inflame the two countries more and more against each other. These measures assumed various shapes to suit the feelings and catch the passions of particular individuals or classes of men, and were urged with unremitting zeal, and indefatigable industry. Sometimes commercial restrictions on the trade of England were attempted; sometimes the intercourse between the two countries was to be cut off; and sometimes confiscation and sequestration were resorted to. Many of our best citizens, and the firmest friends to peace and neutrality, were impelled by the warmth of the moment, and the insinuations of this party, to favor and even propose or advocate these measures; and nothing was omitted to raise a storm of popular resentment and public odium against all those who had the firmness to withstand them. To speak of negociation was branded as pusillanimity; to speak of attempts at amicable adjustment, was pronounced to be little short of treason. Gentlemen, for their opposition to these hostile measures, were stigmatized on this floor as the agents of England; mobs were hired to burn them in effigy in various towns in the union; the presses devoted to the war party assailed them with continued vollies of calumny; their names were coupled with every disgraceful epithet, with every vile accusation; in the toasts of clubs, and the resolutions of societies; and finally, by all these means, aided by the continued aggressions of England, an universal flame was excited in the country, and the party saw itself approach to the moment of its triumph over the system of peace and neutrality.

When the country was thus on the point of rushing down the precipice, the President of the United States, destined so often to become its saviour, again stretched out his paternal hand and prevented the fall. Interposing the powers of his office, and his unbounded personal popularity, between the legislature and the gulf at the very brink of which it had almost arrived, he arrested its career, and afforded the country time to recover from its delirium. He sent an envoy extraordinary, to make one further attempt at an amicable adjustment of our differences with England, before we should resolve to terminate them by the sword; and by this step he again broke the measures of the war party.

Their rage was proportioned to their disappointment, and it hurried them into the most furious invectives against the President, against the envoy, and against all who were understood to favor the measure. Every body remembers, Mr. Chairman, how they accused this envoy of being a tool of the British ministry, an enemy to liberty, and even an opposer of the independence of this country. Every body remembers what clamours were raised about the unconstitutionality of his appointment; how the clubs toasted, the orators harangued, and the societies resolved. Every body remembers how all the presses, under the influence of this party, loudly alleged, that the friends of the negociation were a faction devoted to England, and that the President of the United States, by sending the envoy, had placed himself at the head of the faction. Every one remembers how the leaders of this party did not refrain from repeating these accusations within the walls of this House, and even on this floor. It was in vain that the friends of the measure and of peace, spoke to them in language like this. "Let this attempt at negociation be made, and if it fails, we will join you in war. Should England refuse to do us justice, when thus peaceably applied to, we will join you in every measure of compulsion. We consider this as

the last effort at negociation; and so the President has announced it in his message for nominating the envoy." No! These gentlemen now so peaceable, when France repels with contempt two successive efforts at negociation, and meets all our advances by new measures of hostility, could then be satisfied with nothing less, than immediate measures of coercion and irritation against England. A single attempt to negociate, they reprobated as pusillanimity, and the very idea of a compromise they treated as a surrender of the rights and honor of the country.

When the envoy arrived, and presented a memorial, stating all our claims, and urging satisfaction, but urging in the usual forms of diplomatic civility, these forms were converted into a cause of accusation, a most violent outcry was raised against this civility by the very gentlemen who now proclaim their unbounded and even enthusiastic approbation of the conduct of the late minister to France, who, in his first address to the government of that republic, assured it solemnly and publicly, that this country was ready to submit cheerfully to any infractions of its treaties or violation of its rights, which France might think it for her own advantage to commit! Whence this strange inconsistency, but from an eager desire of war against England, and a blind servile devotedness to France? And will And will gentlemen after all this deny, that the whole scope of the measures, the whole drift of the system of their party, has been war against England and alliance with France?

The envoy, however, continued to negociate, and at length concluded a treaty, by which ancient differences were adjusted, and the foundation laid for amity in future. No sooner did the treaty arrive in the country, than every artifice was used to enflame the public mind, and excite against it the popular prejudices. Nothing was omitted to defeat it in the senate, and when ratified by that body, it was attacked by every coffee-house politician of the party, before it was published, by all