American Eloquence Volume I Part 4

But am I reduced to the necesity of proving this point? Certainly the very men who charged the Indian war on the detention of the posts, will call for no other proof than the recital of their own speeches. It is remembered with what emphasis, with what acrimony, they expatiated on the burden of taxes, and the drain of blood and treasure into the Western country, in consequence of Britain's holding the posts. Until the posts are restored, they exclaimed, the treasury and the frontiers must bleed.

If any, against all these proofs, should maintain that the peace with the Indians will be stable without the posts, to them I urge another reply. From arguments calculated to produce conviction, I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask, whether it is not already planted there? I resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, whether supposing no posts and no treaty, the settlers will remain in security? Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circ.u.mstances, will prove firm? No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the tomahawk.

On this theme my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log-house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false security; your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be renewed; the wounds, yet unhealed, are to be torn open again; in the daytime, your path through the woods will be ambushed; the darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father--the blood of your sons shall fatten your cornfield; you are a mother--the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings. It is a spectacle of horror, which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, it will speak a language, compared with which all I have said or can say will be poor and frigid.

Will it be whispered that the treaty has made me a new champion for the protection of the frontiers? It is known that my voice as well as vote have been uniformly given in conformity with the ideas I have expressed.

Protection is the right of the frontiers; it is our duty to give it.

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one deny, that we are bound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Have the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish petty topics of harangue from the windows of that state-house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask.

Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk without guilt and without remorse.

It is vain to offer as an excuse, that public men are not to be reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue from their measures.

This is very true where they are unforeseen or inevitable. Those I have depicted are not unforeseen; they are so far from inevitable, we are going to bring them into being by our vote. We choose the consequences, and become as justly answerable for them as for the measures that we know will 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 G.o.d. 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 const.i.tute 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 when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary one of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the const.i.tution and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue?

They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal--as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissentions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better discernment than mine. They can see the bright aspects and the happy consequences of all this array of horrors.

They can see intestine discords, our government disorganized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied, and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or resources, in "the calm lights of mild philosophy."

But whatever they may antic.i.p.ate as the next measure of prudence and safety, they have explained nothing to the house. After rejecting the treaty, what is to be the next step? They must have foreseen what ought to be done; they have doubtless resolved what to propose. Why then are they silent? Dare they not avow their plan of conduct, or do they wait till our progress toward confusion shall guide them in forming it?

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another, which it is yet in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance--without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, and all will confess, have preserved, it? Will he not feel some dread that a change of system will reverse the scene? The well-grounded fears of our citizens in 1794 were removed by the treaty, but are not forgotten. Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and would not this adjustment have been considered, at that day, as a happy escape from the calamity? The great interest and the general desire of our people, was to enjoy the advantages of neutrality. This instrument, however misrepresented, affords America that inestimable security. The causes of our disputes are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a new negotiation after the end of the European war. This was gaining everything, because it confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens are gaining everything.

This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentred in this one, that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the s.p.a.ce where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale,--it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest and war.

Let us not hesitate, then, to agree to the appropriation to carry it into faithful execution.

Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and, some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast, and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proofs of their industry--as the instruments of their future success. The rewards of exertion go to augment its power. Profit is every hour becoming capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost beyond calculation, the future harvest of prosperity. And in this progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

I rose to speak under impressions that I would have resisted if I could.

Those who see me will believe that the reduced state of my health has unfitted me, almost equally for much exertion of body or mind.

Unprepared for debate, by careful reflection in my retirement, or by long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent, was imposed by necesity, and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet, when I come to the moment of deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I have spent in expostulation have their value, because they protract the crisis, and the short period in which alone we may resolve to escape it.

I have thus been led, by my feelings, to speak more at length than I intended. Yet I have, perhaps, as little personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote shall pa.s.s to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the government and const.i.tution of my country.

JOHN NICHOLAS

ON THE PROPOSED REPEAL OF THE SEDITION LAW

--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 25, 1799

MR. CHAIRMAN:

The Select Committee had very truly stated that only the second and third sections of the act are complained of; that the part of the law which punishes seditious acts is acquiesced in, and that the part which goes to restrain what are called seditious writings is alone the object of the pet.i.tions. This part of the law is complained of as being unwarranted by the Const.i.tution, and destructive of the first principles of republican government. It is always justifiable, in examining the principle of a law, to inquire what other laws can be pa.s.sed with equal reason, and to impute to it all the mischiefs for which it may be used as a precedent.

In this case, little inquiry is left for us to make, the arguments in favor of the law carrying us immediately and by inevitable consequence to absolute power over the press.

It is not pretended that the Const.i.tution has given any express authority, which they claim, for pa.s.sing this law, and it is claimed only as implied in that clause of the Const.i.tution which says: "Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Const.i.tution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." It is clear that this clause was intended to be merely an auxiliary to the powers specially enumerated in the Const.i.tution; and it must, therefore, be so construed as to aid them, and at the same time to leave the boundaries between the General Government and the State governments untouched. The argument by which the Select Committee have endeavored to establish the authority of Congress over the press is the following: "Congress has power to punish seditious combinations to resist the laws, and therefore Congress must have the power to punish false, scandalous, and malicious writings; because such writings render the Administration odious and contemptible among the people, and by doing so have a tendency to produce opposition to the laws." To make it support the construction of the committee, it should say that "Congress shall have power over all acts which are likely to produce acts which hinder the execution of," etc. Our construction confines the power of Congress to such acts as immediately interfere with the execution of the enumerated powers of Congress, because the power can only be necessary as well as proper when the acts would really hinder the execution. The construction of the committee extends the power of Congress to all acts which have a relation, ever so many degrees removed, to the enumerated powers, or rather to the acts which would hinder their execution. By our construction, the Const.i.tution remains defined and limited, according to the plain intent and meaning of its framers; by the construction of the committee, all limitation is lost, and it may be extended over the different actions of life as speculative politicians may think fit. What has a greater tendency to fit men for insurrection and resistance to government than dissolute, immoral habits, at once destroying love of order, and dissipating the fortune which gives an interest in society? The doctrine that Congress can punish any act which has a tendency to hinder the execution of the laws, as well as acts which do hinder it, will, therefore, clearly ent.i.tle them to a.s.sume a general guardianship over the morals of the people of the United States. Again, nothing can have a greater tendency to ensure obedience to law, and nothing can be more likely to check every propensity to resistance to government, than virtuous and wise education; therefore Congress must have power to subject all the youth of the United States to a certain system of education. It would be very easy to connect every sort of authority used by any government with the well-being of the General Government, and with as much reason as the committee had for their opinion, to a.s.sign the power to Congress, although the consequence must be the prostration of the State governments.

But enough has been said to show the necessity of adhering to the common meaning of the word "necessary" in the clause under consideration, which is, that the power to be a.s.sumed must be one without which some one of the enumerated powers cannot exist or be maintained. It cannot escape notice, however, that the doctrine contended for, that the Administration must be protected against writings which are likely to bring it into contempt, as tending to opposition, will apply with more force to truth than falsehood. It cannot be denied that the discovery of maladministration will bring more lasting discredit on the government of a country than the same charges would if untrue. This is not an alarm founded merely on construction, for the governments which have exercised control over the press have carried it the whole length. This is notoriously the law of England, whence this system has been drawn; for there truth and falsehood are alike subject to punishment, if the publication brings contempt on the officers of government.

The law has been current by the fair pretence of punishing nothing but falsehood, and by holding out to the accused the liberty of proving the truth of the writing; but it was from the first apprehended, and it seems now to be adjudged (the doctrine has certainly been a.s.serted on this floor), that matters of opinion, arising on notorious facts, come under the law. If this is the case, where is the advantage of the law requiring that the writing should be false before a man shall be liable to punishment, or of his having the liberty of proving the truth of his writing? Of the truth of facts there is an almost certain test; the belief of honest men is certain enough to ent.i.tle it to great confidence; but their opinions have no certainty at all. The trial of the truth of opinions, in the best state of society, would be altogether precarious; and perhaps a jury of twelve men could never be found to agree in any one opinion. At the present moment, when, unfortunately, opinion is almost entirely governed by prejudice and pa.s.sion, it may be more decided, but n.o.body will say it is more respectable. Chance must determine whether political opinions are true or false, and it will not unfrequently happen that a man will be punished for publishing opinions which are sincerely his, and which are of a nature to be extremely interesting to the public, merely because accident or design has collected a jury of different sentiments.

Is the power claimed proper for Congress to possess? It is believed not, and this will readily be admitted if it can be proved, as I think it can, that the persons who administer the government have an interest in the power to be confided opposed to that of the community. It must be agreed that the nature of our government makes a diffusion of knowledge of public affairs necessary and proper, and that the people have no mode of obtaining it but through the press. The necessity for their having this information results from its being their duty to elect all the parts of the Government, and, in this way, to sit in judgment over the conduct of those who have been heretofore employed. The most important and necessary information for the people to receive is that of the misconduct of the Government, because their good deeds, although they will produce affection and grat.i.tude to public officers, will only confirm the existing confidence, and will, therefore, make no change in the conduct of the people. The question, then, whether the Government ought to have control over the persons who alone can give information throughout a country is nothing more than this, whether men, interested in suppressing information necessary for the people to have, ought to be entrusted with the power, or whether they ought to have a power which their personal interest leads to the abuse of. I am sure no candid man will hesitate about the answer; and it may also safely be left with ingenuous men to say whether the misconduct which we sometimes see in the press had not better be borne with, than to run the risk of confiding the power of correction to men who will be constantly urged by their own feelings to destroy its usefulness. How long can it be desirable to have periodical elections for the purpose of judging of the conduct of our rulers, when the channels of information may be choked at their will?

But, sir, I have ever believed this question as settled by an amendment to the Const.i.tution, proposed with others for declaring and restricting its powers, as the preamble declares, at the request of several of the States, made at the adoption of the Const.i.tution, in order to prevent their misconstruction and abuse. This amendment is in the following words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to a.s.semble and pet.i.tion the Government for a redress of grievances."

There can be no doubt about the effect of this amendment, unless the "freedom of the press" means something very different from what it seems; or unless there was some actual restraint upon it, under the Const.i.tution of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this amendment, commensurate with that imposed by this law. Both are a.s.serted, viz., that the "freedom of the press" has a defined, limited meaning, and that the restraints of the common law were in force under the United States, and are greater than those of the act of Congress, and that, therefore, either way the "freedom of the press" is not abridged.

It is a.s.serted by the select committee, and by everybody who has gone before them in this discussion, that the "freedom of the press,"

according to the universally received acceptation of the expression, means only an exemption from all previous restraints on publication, but not an exemption from any punishment Government pleases to inflict for what is published. This definition does not at all distinguish between publications of different sorts, but leaves all to the regulation of the law, only forbidding Government to interfere until the publication is really made. The definition, if true, so reduces the effect of the amendment that the power of Congress is left unlimited over the productions of the press, and they are merely deprived of one mode of restraint.

The amendment was certainly intended to produce some limitation to legislative discretion, and it must be construed so as to produce such an effect, if it is possible. To give it such a construction as will bring it to a mere nullity would violate the strongest injunctions of common-sense and decorum, and yet that appears to me to be the effect of the construction adopted by the committee. The effect of the amendment, say the committee, is to prevent Government taking the press from its owner; but how is their power lessened by this, when they may take the printer from his press and imprison him for any length of time, for publishing what they choose to prohibit, although it maybe ever so proper for public information? The result is that Government may forbid any species of writing, true as well as false, to be published; may inflict the heaviest punishments they can devise for disobedience, and yet we are very gravely a.s.sured that this is the "freedom of the press."

A distinction is very frequently relied on between the freedom and the licentiousness of the press, which it is proper to examine. This seems to me to refute every other argument which is used on this subject; it amounts to an admission that there are some acts of the press which Congress ought not to have power to restrain, and that by the amendment they are prohibited to restrain these acts. Nov, to justify any act of Congress, they ought to show the boundary between what is prohibited and what is permitted, and that the act is not within the prohibited cla.s.s.

The Const.i.tution has fixed no such boundary, therefore they can pretend to no power over the press, without claiming the right of defining what is freedom and what is licentiousness, and that would be to claim a right which would defeat the Const.i.tution; for every Congress would have the same right, and the freedom of the press would fluctuate according to the will of the legislature. This is, therefore, only a new mode of claiming absolute power over the press.

It is said there is a common law which makes part of the law of the United States, which restrained the press more than the act of Congress has done, and that therefore there is no abridgment of its freedom. What this common law is I cannot conceive, nor have I seen anybody who could explain himself when he was talking of it. It certainly is not a common law of the United States, acquired, as that of England was, by immemorial usage. The standing of the Government makes this impossible.

It cannot be a code of laws adopted because they were universally in use in the States, for the States had no uniform code; and, if they had, it could hardly become, by implication, part of the code of a Government of limited powers, from which every thing is expressly retained which is not given. Is it the law of England, at any particular period, which is adopted? But the nature of the law of England makes it impossible that it should have been adopted in the lump into such a Government as this is, because it was a complete system for the management of all the affairs of a country. It regulated estates, punished all crimes, and, in short, went to all things for which laws were necessary. But how was this law adopted? Was it by the Const.i.tution? If so, it is immutable and incapable of amendment. In what part of the Const.i.tution is it declared to be adopted? Was it adopted by the courts? From whom do they derive their authority? The Const.i.tution, in the clause first cited, relies on Congress to pa.s.s all laws necessary to enable the courts to carry their powers into execution; it cannot, therefore, have been intended to give them a power not necessary to their declared powers. There does not seem to me the smallest pretext for so monstrous an a.s.sumption; on the contrary, while the Const.i.tution is silent about it, every fair inference is against it.

Upon the whole, therefore, I am fully satisfied that no power is given by the Const.i.tution to control the press, and that such laws are expressly prohibited by the amendment. I think it inconsistent with the nature of our Government that its administration should have power to restrain animadversions on public measures, and for protection from private injury from defamation the States are fully competent. It is to them that our officers must look for protection of persons, estates, and every other personal right; and, therefore, I see no reason why it is not proper to rely upon it for defence against private libels.

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY.

The inaugural address of President Jefferson has been given the first place under this period, notwithstanding the fact that it was not at all an oration. The inaugural addresses of presidents Washington and Adams were really orations, although written, depending for much of their effect on the personal presence of him who delivered the address; that of Jefferson was altogether a business doc.u.ment, sent to be read by the two houses of Congress for their information, and without any of the adjuncts of the orator.

It is impossible, nevertheless, to spare the inaugural address of the first Democratic President, for it is pervaded by a personality which, if quieter in its operation, was more potent in results than the most burning eloquence could have been. The spirit of modern democracy, which has become, for good or evil, the common characteristic of all American parties and leaders, was here first put into living words. Triumphant in national politics, this spirit now had but one field of struggle, the politics of the States, and here its efforts were for years bent to the abolition of every remnant of limitation on individual liberty. Outside of New England, the change was accomplished as rapidly as the forms of law could be put into the necessary direction; remnants of ecclesiastical government, ecclesiastical taxes of even the mildest description, restrictions on manhood suffrage, State electoral systems, were the immediate victims of the new spirit, and the first term of Mr.

Jefferson saw most of the States under democratic governments. Inside of New England, the change was stubbornly resisted, and, for a time, with success. For about twenty years, the general rule was that New England and Delaware were federalist, and the rest of the country was democratic. But even in New England, a strong democratic minority was growing up, and about 1820 the last barriers of federalism gave way; Connecticut, the federalist "land of steady habits," accepted a new and democratic const.i.tution; Ma.s.sachusetts modified hers; and the new and reliably democratic State of Maine was brought into existence. The "era of good feeling" signalized the extinction of the federal party and the universal reign of democracy. The length of this period of contest is the strongest testimony to the stubbornness of the New England fibre.

Estimated by States, the success of democracy was about as complete in 1803 as in 1817; but it required fifteen years of persistent struggle to convince the smallest section of the Union that it was hopelessly defeated.