a question which
requires the most serious attention, and which I will now attempt to
investigate.

Should the treaty be finally defeated, either new negotiations will be
more successful or Great Britain will refuse to make a new arrangement,
and leave things in the situation in which they now are, or war will be
the consequence. I will, in the course of my observations, make some
remarks on the last supposition. I do not think that the first will be
very probable at present, and I am of opinion that, under the present
circumstances, and until some change takes place in our own or in the
relative political situation of the European nations, it is to be
apprehended that, in such a case, new negotiations will either be
rejected or prove unsuccessful. Such an event might have perhaps
followed a rejection of the treaty even by the Senate or by the
President. After the negotiator employed by the United States had once
affixed his signature it must have become very problematical, unless he
had exceeded his powers, whether a refusal to sanction the contract he
had made would not eventually defeat, at least for a time, the prospect
of a new treaty. I conceive that the hopes of obtaining better
conditions by a new negotiation are much less in the present stage of
the business than they were when the treaty was in its inchoate form
before the Executive; and in order to form a just idea of the
consequences of a rejection at present, I will contemplate them upon
this supposition, which appears to me most probable, to wit, that no new
treaty will take place for a certain period of time.

In mentioning my objections to the treaty itself, I have already stated
the advantages which in my opinion would result to the United States
from the non-existence of that instrument; I will not repeat, but
proceed at once to examine what losses may accrue that can be set off
against those advantages.

The further detention of the posts, the national stain that will result
from receiving no reparation for the spoliations on our trade, and the
uncertainty of a final adjustment of our differences with Great Britain,
are the three evils which strike me as resulting from a rejection of the
treaty; and when to those considerations I add that of the present
situation of this country, of the agitation of the public mind, and of
the advantages that will arise from union of sentiments, however
injurious and unequal I conceive the treaty to be, however rep