ons for ourselves, and offer exhortations to the house, that no
influence should be felt but that of duty, and no guide respected but
that of the understanding, while the peal to rally every passion of man
is continually ringing in our ears? Our understandings have been
addressed, it is true, and with ability and effect; but, I demand, has
any corner of the heart been unexplored? It has been ransacked to find
auxiliary arguments; and, when that attempt failed, to awaken the
sensibility that would require none. Every prejudice and feeling has
been summoned to listen to some peculiar style of address; and yet we
seem to believe and to consider a doubt as an affront, that we are
strangers to any influence but that of unbiassed reason.... It is very
unfairly pretended, that the constitutional right of this house is at
stake, and to be asserted and preserved only by a vote in the negative.
We hear it said, that this is a struggle for liberty, a manly resistance
against the design to nullify the existence of this assembly, and to
make it a cypher in the government; that the president and senate, the
numerous meetings in the cities, and the influence of the general alarm
of the country, are the agents and instruments of a scheme of coercion
and terror, and in spite of the clearest convictions of duty and
conscience.

"It is necessary to pause here, and inquire whether suggestions of this
kind be not unfair in their very texture and fabric, and pernicious in
all their influences. They oppose an obstacle in the path of inquiry,
not simply discouraging, but absolutely insurmountable. They will not
yield to argument; for, as they were not reasoned up, they can not be
reasoned down. They are higher than a Chinese wall in truth's way, and
built of materials that are indestructible. While this remains, it is
vain to say to this mountain, be thou cast into the sea. For I ask of
the men of knowledge of the world, whether they would not hold him for a
blockhead, that should hope to prevail in an argument, whose scope and
object is to mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask
further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed
of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction that is believed
to debase it.... Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be
only by way of supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible
they have yielded too suddenly to their own alarms for the powers of