ill produce them.

By rejecting the posts we light the savage fires--we bind the victims.
This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom
our decision will make, to the wretches that will be roasted at the
stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to
conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if duty be any thing more
than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bug-bear, we are
preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country.

There is no mistake in this case--there can be none. Experience has
already been the prophet of events, and the cries of future victims have
already reached us. The Western inhabitants are not a silent and
uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of
their wilderness. It exclaims that, while one hand is held up to reject
this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to
the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to
conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I
listen to the yells of savage vengeance, and the shrieks of torture.
Already they seem to sigh in the west wind-already they mingle with
every echo from the mountains.

It is not the part of prudence to be inattentive to the tendencies of
measures. Where there is any ground to fear that these will prove
pernicious, wisdom and duty forbid that we should underrate them. If we
reject the treaty, will our peace be as safe as if we executed it with
good faith? I do honor to the intrepid spirits of those who say it will.
It was formerly understood to constitute the excellence of a man's faith
to believe without evidence and against it.

But, as opinions on this article are changed, and we are called to act
for our country, it becomes us to explore the dangers that will attend
its peace, and to avoid them if we can.

Is there any thing in the prospect of the interior state of the country
to encourage us to aggravate the dangers of a war? Would not the shock
of that evil produce another, and shake down the feeble and then
unbraced structure of our government? Is this a chimera? Is it going off
the ground of matter of fact to say, the rejection of the appropriation
proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war of the departments? Two
branches have ratified a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. How
is this disorder in the machine to be rectified? While it exists its
movements must stop, and w