n might truly say
to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my
mother and my sister. We should say of such a race of men, their
name is a heavier burden than their debt.

I can scarcely persuade myself to believe that the consideration I
have suggested requires the aid of any auxiliary. But,
unfortunately, auxiliary arguments are at hand. Five millions of
dollars, and probably more, on the score of spoliations committed on
our commerce, depend upon the treaty. The treaty offers the only
prospect of indemnity. Such redress is promised as the merchants
place some confidence in. Will you interpose and frustrate that
hope, leaving to many families nothing but beggary and despair? It
is a smooth proceeding to take a vote in this body; it takes less
than half an hour to call the yeas and nays and reject the treaty.
But what is the effect of it? What, but this? The very men
formerly so loud for redress, such fierce champions that even to ask
for justice was too mean and too slow, now turn their capricious
fury upon the sufferers and say by their vote, to them and their
families, No longer eat bread; petitioners, go home and starve; we
can not satisfy your wrongs and our resentments.

Will you pay the sufferers out of the treasury? No. The answer was
given two years ago, and appears on our journals. Will you give them
letters of marque and reprisal to pay themselves by force? No; that
is war. Besides, it would be an opportunity for those who have
already lost much to lose more. Will you go to war to avenge their
injury? If you do, the war will leave you no money to indemnify
them. If it should be unsuccessful, you will aggravate existing
evils; if successful, your enemy will have no treasure left to give
our merchants; the first losses will be confounded with much
greater, and be forgotten. At the end of a war there must be a
negotiation, which is the very point we have already gained; and why
relinquish it? And who will be confident that the terms of the
negotiation, after a desolating war, would be more acceptable to
another House of Representatives than the treaty before us? Members
and opinions may be so changed that the treaty would then be
rejected for being what the present majority say it should be.
Whether we shall go on making treaties and refusing to execute them,
I know not. Of this I am certain, it will be very difficult to
exercise the treaty-making power on the new princ