But, Sir, if the power to make reprisals, and this money from the treasury, had both been granted, is there not great reason to believe that we should have been now actually at war?  I think there is great reason to believe this.  It will be said, I know, that if we had armed the President with this power of war, and supplied him with this grant of money, France would have taken it for such a proof of spirit on our part, that she would have paid the indemnity without further delay.  This is the old story, and the old plea.  It is the excuse of every one who desires more power than the Constitution or the laws give him, that if he had more power he could do more good.  Power is always claimed for the good of the people; and dictators are always made, when made at all, for the good of the people.  For my part, Sir, I was content, and am content, to show France that we are prepared to maintain our just rights against her by the exertion of our power, when need be, according to the forms of our own Constitution; that, if we make war, we will make it constitutionally; and that we will trust all our interests, both in peace and war, to what the intelligence and the strength of the country may do for them, without breaking down or endangering the fabric of our free institutions.

Mr. President, it is the misfortune of the Senate to have differed with the executive on many great questions during the last four or five years.  I have regretted this state of things deeply, both on personal and on public accounts; but it has been unavoidable.  It is no pleasant employment, it is no holiday business, to maintain opposition against power and against majorities, and to contend for stern and sturdy principle, against personal popularity, against a rushing and overwhelming confidence, that, by wave upon wave and cataract after cataract, seems to be bearing away and destroying whatsoever would withstand it.  How much longer we may be able to support this opposition in any degree, or whether we can possibly hold out till the public intelligence and the public patriotism shall be awakened to a due sense of the public danger, it is not for me to foretell.  I shall not despair to the last, if, in the mean time, we are true to our own principles.  If there be a steadfast adherence to these principles, both here and elsewhere, if, one and all, they continue the rule of our conduct in the Senate, and the rallying-point of those who think with us and support us out of the Senate, I am content to hope on and to struggle on.  While it remains a contest for the preservation of the Constitution, for the security of public liberty, for the ascendency of principles over men, I am willing to bear my part of it.  If we can maintain the Constitution, if we can preserve this security for liberty, if we can thus give to true principle its just superiority over party, over persons, over names, our labors will be richly rewarded.  If we fail in all this, they are already among the living who will write the history of this government, from its commencement to its close.