Before our opinions are quoted against ourselves, it is proper, that, from our serious deliberation, they may be worth quoting.  It is without reason we praise the wisdom of our Constitution in putting under the discretion of the crown the awful trust of war and peace, if the ministers of the crown virtually return it again into our hands.  The trust was placed there as a sacred deposit, to secure us against popular rashness in plunging into wars, and against the effects of popular dismay, disgust, or lassitude, in getting out of them as imprudently as we might first engage in them.  To have no other measure in judging of those great objects than our momentary opinions and desires is to throw us back upon that very democracy which, in this part, our Constitution was formed to avoid.

It is no excuse at all for a minister who at our desire takes a measure contrary to our safety, that it is our own act.  He who does not stay the hand of suicide is guilty of murder.  On our part, I say, that to be instructed is not to be degraded or enslaved.  Information is an advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it.  He that is bound to act in the dark cannot be said to act freely.  When it appears evident to our governors that our desires and our interests are at variance, they ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter.  Statesmen are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we can possibly command.  They have a whole before them, which we can contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary relations.  Ministers are not only our natural rulers, but our natural guides.  Reason, clearly and manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty force; but reason in the mouth of legal authority is, I may fairly say, irresistible.

I admit that reason of state will not, in many circumstances, permit the disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding.  In that case silence is manly, and it is wise.  It is fair to call for trust, when the principle of reason itself suspends its public use.  I take the distinction to be this:  the ground of a particular measure making a part of a plan it is rarely proper to divulge; all the broader grounds of policy, on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to be concealed.  They who have not the whole cause before them, call them politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges.  The difficulties of the case, as well as its fair side, ought to be presented.  This ought to be done; and it is all that can be done.  When we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we resolve, with a blind and headlong violence, to resist the admonitions of our friends, and to cast ourselves into the hands of our potent and irreconcilable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand acquitted before God and man for whatever may come.