erations. If there be anything important in the concerns of men, the considerations which fill the present hour are important. I am anxious, above all things, to stand acquitted before GOD, & my own conscience, & in the public judgments, of all participations in the Counsels, which have bought us to our present condition, & which now threaten the dissolution of the Government. When the present generation of men shall be swept away, & that this Government ever existed shall be a matter of history only, I desire that it may then be known, that you have not proceeded in your course unadmonished & unforewarned. Let it then be known, that there were those, who would have stopped you, in the career of your measures, & held you back, as by the skirts of your garments, from the precipice, over which you are now plunging, & drawing after you the Government of your Country.
I had hoped, Sir, at an early period of the session, to find gentlemen in another temper. I trusted that the existing state of things would have impressed on the minds of those, who decide national measures, the necessity of some reform in the administration of affairs. If it was not to have been expected that gentlemen would be convinced by argument, it was still not unreasonable to hope that they would listen to the solemn preaching of events. If no previous reasoning could satisfy them, that the favorite plans of Government would fail, they might yet be expected to regard the fact, when it happened, & to yield to the lesson which it taught. Although they had, last year, given no credit to those who predicted the failure of the campaign against Canada, yet they had seen that failure. Although they then treated as idle all doubts of the success of the loan, they had seen the failure of that loan. Although they then held in derision all fears for the public credit, & the national faith, they had yet seen the public credit destroyed, & the national faith violated & disgraced. They had seen much more than was predicted; for no man had foretold that our means of defence would be so far exhausted in foreign invasion, as to leave the place of our own deliberations insecure, & that we should, this day, be legislating in view of the crumbling monuments of our national disgrace.[supp 1] No one had anticipated that this City would have fallen before a handful of troops, & that British Generals & British Admirals would have taken their airings along the Pennsylvania Avenue, while the government was in full flight, just awaked perhaps from one of its profound meditations on the plan of a Conscription for the conquest of Canada. These events, Sir,
- ↑ As part of the Chesapeake campaign of War of 1812, the British burned buildings in Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1814, less than four months prior to this speech. The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, was signed fifteen days after this speech. (Wikisource contributor note)
