Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)United States. Congress
History
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)
United States. Congress
Law -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
TUESDAY, December 6.
_Foreign Relations._
The report of the Committee on Foreign Relations being again before the
House, and the question still on the first resolution--
Mr. GHOLSON said: Mr. Speaker, were I to yield to my embarrassment on
the present occasion, I should not trespass on your indulgence. But
when I reflect upon the great national importance of the question now
before the House, and upon the high responsibility which its decision
must attach to me as one of the Representatives of the people; I am
impelled, from considerations of duty, to assign to you the reasons by
which I am influenced.
It has been said, sir, with great truth, that the present is an
extraordinary crisis. It seems indeed to have been reserved for the
age in which we live, to witness a combination of political events
unparalleled in the annals of time. Almost the whole civilized world
has been within a few years convulsed by wars, battles, and conquests.
Kingdoms and empires have been revolutionized; and we behold a vast
continent assuming a new aspect under a new dynasty. Those laws which
from time immemorial have prescribed and limited the conduct of
nations, are now contemptuously prostrated, innocent neutrality is
banished from the ocean, and we hear a grim tyrant asserting himself
the sovereign of the seas. Thus the most essential part of the globe is
attempted to be partitioned between two domineering rival belligerents.
Sir, it would have been a subject of the sincerest felicitation if our
happy country could have been exempt from this universal concussion.
But we are fated to share evils in the production of which we have had
no participation. In inquiring, Mr. Speaker, into the causes of these
evils and the policy by which we are to be extricated from them, I am
conscious of two things--of my utter incompetency to the elucidation
of so great a subject, and of the unavoidable necessity of touching
upon ground already occupied by gentlemen who have preceded me in this
debate.
When, sir, I recur to the resolutions reported by the Committee of
Exterior Relations, I find one which proposes resistance to the edicts
of Great Britain and France; and another which recommends a system of
non-intercourse between the United States and those countries.
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