non-attendance of five or six of that description has left the majority very equivocal indeed.  A few individuals of no fixed system at all, governed by the panic or the prowess of the moment, flap as the breeze blows against the republican or the aristocratic bodies, and give to the one or the other a preponderance entirely accidental.  Hence the dissimilar aspect of the address, and of the proceedings subsequent to that.  The inflammatory composition of the speech excited sensations of resentment which had slept under British injuries, threw the wavering into the war scale, and produced the war address.  Bonaparte’s victories and those on the Rhine, the Austrian peace, British bankruptcy, mutiny of the seamen, and Mr. King’s exhortations to pacific measures, have cooled them down again, and the scale of peace preponderates.  The threatening propositions therefore, founded in the address, are abandoned one by one, and the cry begins now to be, that we have been called together to do nothing.  The truth is, there is nothing to do, the idea of war being scouted by the events of Europe:  but this only proves that war was the object for which we were called.  It proves that the executive temper was for war; and that the convocation of the Representatives was an experiment of the temper of the nation, to see if it was in unison.  Efforts at negotiation indeed were promised; but such a promise was as difficult to withhold, as easy to render nugatory.  If negotiation alone had been meant, that might have been pursued without so much delay, and without calling the Representatives; and if strong and earnest negotiation had been meant, the additional nomination would have been of persons strongly and earnestly attached to the alliance of 1778.  War then was intended.  Whether abandoned or not, we must judge from future indications and events:  for the same secrecy and mystery are affected to be observed by the present, which marked the former administration.  I had always hoped, that the popularity of the late President being once withdrawn from active effect, the natural feelings of the people towards liberty would restore the equilibrium between the executive and legislative departments, which had been destroyed by the superior weight and effect of that popularity; and that their natural feelings of moral obligation would discountenance the ungrateful predilection of the executive in favor of Great Britain.  But unfortunately, the preceding measures had already alienated the nation who were the object of them, had excited reaction from them, and this reaction has on the minds of our citizens an effect which supplies that of the Washington popularity.  This effect was sensible on some of the late congressional elections, and this it is which has lessened the republican majority in Congress.  When it will be reinforced, must depend on events, and these are so incalculable, that I consider the future character of our republic as in the air; indeed its future fortune will be in the air, if war is made on us by France, and if Louisiana becomes a Gallo-American colony.