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 God.  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 constitute the excellence of a man’s faith to believe without evidence and against it.