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
Mr. RANDOLPH said he believed there would be no better time than on
this motion to express the disapprobation which he felt of the report;
for he was unwilling in his representative capacity, to give one cent
of the public money for bringing back into the bosom of the body
politic these unfortunate but guilty men. He knew how invidious a task
it was to appear to lean to the side of inhumanity; he knew how very
natural it was for the mind of man to relent after the commission of a
crime, and to see nothing in a culprit but his misfortunes, forgetting
his guilt; but there were occasions, and he took this to be one, where
to lean apparently to the side of humanity is an act of as great
injustice and cruelty to society as the Legislature can commit. What
were the House about to do? To make an appropriation of money for an
extraordinary purpose of foreign intercourse. Was not the President
of the United States already invested with power to negotiate with
the Spanish Government on this, as well as with any other Government
on any subject? Was the President of the United States presumed to
have turned a deaf ear to the cries of our suffering countrymen in
captivity in a foreign nation? Mr. R. said this was not like a question
of redeeming our countrymen from slavery in Barbary or Tripoli; but it
was a question whether this Government would lend its countenance to
that class of men who were concerned in the expeditions of Miranda and
Aaron Burr. He for one said, that he would not consent to it; and that
those persons who, above the dull pursuits of civil life, had enlisted
under these leaders, might take for him, however he might feel for
their situation as men, the lot which they themselves had selected. He
said he considered them as voluntarily expatriated from this country,
and among the articles of commerce and manufacture, which it might be
contemplated to encourage by bounty and premiums, he confessed for one,
that the importation of such citizens as these was not an article of
traffic which would meet with any encouragement from him. So far from
being afraid of any ill consequences resulting from the sparseness of
our population, he was afraid that our population, (and experience has
tested the fact,) sparse as it was in number, in quality was redundant.
We have been told, said Mr. R., and I believe it, that but the other
day the Foreign Office in Great Britain cast its eyes on Colonel Burr,
and that they either did commit him--I understand that he was committed
and stood so for some time, and was only released on condition of
quitting the country--that they either did commit or threaten to
imprison that unfortunate man. I want to know, sir, if he had stood
so committed, in what respect his case, in a political point of view,
would have stood contradistinguished from that of these petitioners?
I can see no difference but such as, in my mind, would have operated
to his advantage. There is an equality of guilt, but on his part a
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