If in this case contemplated by them it should be peace, I do not hesitate to declare it ought not to be peace.

21. Is there any thing in the prospect of the interior state of the country, to encourage us, to aggravate the dangers of war? Would not the shock of that evil pro. duce another, and shake down the feeble and then unbraced structure of our government? Is this the 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 interposition of the people? And is this in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the constitu tion, 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 believe that our union, our peace, our liberty are invulnerable and immortal-as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissension, 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 happy consequences, of all this array of horrors.They can see intestine discords, our governmeut dis organized, our wrongs aggravated, multiplied and unredressed, peace with dishonor, or war without justice, union or resources in," the calm lights of mild philosophy."

22. Let me cheer the mind, weary no doubt and readyto 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 of 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

ar 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 neutralityThis 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 negociation, after the end of the European war. This was gaining every thing, because it confirmed our neutrality by. which our citizens are gaining every thing. This alone would justify the engagements of the government. For, when the fiery vapours of the war lowered in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were concentered 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 space 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.

23. Let us not hesitate then to agree to the appropriation to carry it into. a 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 faithful and vast, and if peace and good government should be preserved, the acquisition of our citizens are not so pleasing as the proof 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 this progress which seems to be fiction, is found to fall short of experience.

24. 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 necessity, 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. 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.

25. I have thus been led by my feelings to speak more at length than I had 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 consequence greater than mine. If however the vote should pass 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 con-stitution of my country.

1.

From CICERO's Oration against VERRES.

TH

THE time has come, fathers, when that which has long been wished for towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputa tions against trials, is (not by human contrivance but superior direction) effectually put in our power.

2. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you and pernicious to the state, viz. that in prosecutions men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted!

3. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion I hope of the propagators of this slandercus imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons, but who according to his own reckoning and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted: I mean Caius Verres.

4. If that sentence is past upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, fathers will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public. But if his great riches should bias you in his favor, I shall still gain one point, viz. to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal non prosecutor, but stice:

and adequate pul

5. To pass over the surful irregularities of his youth, Awhat does his questorship, the host public employment né held, what does it exhibit, but end continued brede ofs

Ilanies? Cneus Carbo plundered of the public money by is own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army eserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil nd religious rights of a people violated.

6. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphyia, what did it produce, but the ruin of those countries? n which houses, cities and temples, were robbed by him. What was his conduct in his pretorship here at home? Let he plundered temples, and the public works, neglected, hat he might embezzle the money intended for carrying hem on, bear witness. But his pretorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and furnishes a lasting monument to his infamy.

7. The mischiefs done by him in that country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of pretors will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them.

8. For it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman senate upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men.

9. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily these three years; and his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard of impositions extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies.

10. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money have been exempted from deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters condemned and banished unheard.

11. The harbors, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravaged; the soldiers and sailors belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish; the ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off, and the temples stripped of their images,

12. The infamy of his lewdness has been such as deceney forbids me to describe; nor will I by mentioning particulars, put those unfortunate persons to fresh pain, who have not been able to save their wives and daughters from his impurity.

13. And these his atrocious crimes, have been committed in so public a manner, that there is no one who has heard of his name, but could reckon up his actions. Having, by his iniquitious sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the goals; so that the exclamation, “ I am a citizen of Rome," which has often in the most distant regions and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them, but on the contrary brought upon them speedier and more severe punishment.

14. I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance agianst this charge; Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated is alledged against you? Had any prince or any state committed the same outrage against the privilege of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them?

15. What punishment then ought to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked pretor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion, that unfortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in prison, at Syracuse, from whence he had just made his escape.

16. The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked pretor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion of having come to Sicily as a spy.

17. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citiz n-I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panda mus and will attest my innocence.". The blood thirsty pretor, deaf to all he could urge in his