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 principles, with much reputation or advantage to the country.

The refusal of the posts (inevitable if we reject the treaty) is a measure too decisive in its nature to be neutral in its consequences.  From great causes we are to look for great effects.  A plain and obvious one will be the price of the western lands will fall.  Settlers will not choose to fix their habitation on a field of battle.  Those who talk so much of the interest of the United States should calculate how deeply it will be affected by rejecting the treaty; how vast a tract of wild land will almost cease to be property.  The loss, let it be observed, will fall upon a fund expressly devoted to sink the national debt.  What, then, are we called upon to do?  However the form of the vote and the protestations of many may disguise the proceeding, our resolution is in substance, and it deserves to wear the title of a resolution to prevent the sale of the western lands and the discharge of the public debt.