American Eloquence, Volume 1: Studies In American Political History (1896)
History
American Eloquence, Volume 1: Studies In American Political History (1896)
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government
But sir, I must speak of another subject, which I never think of but
with feelings of the deepest awe. The gentleman from Massachusetts, in
imitation of some of his predecessors of 1799, has entertained us with a
picture of cabinet plots, presidential plots, and all sorts of plots,
which have been engendered by the diseased state of the gentleman's
imagination. I wish, sir, that another plot, of a much more serious and
alarming character--a plot that aims at the dismemberment of our
Union--had only the same imaginary existence. But no man, who has paid
any attention to the tone of certain prints and to transactions in a
particular quarter of the Union, for several years past, can doubt the
existence of such a plot. It was far, very far from my intention to
charge the opposition with such a design. No, I believe them generally
incapable of it. But I cannot say as much for some who have been
unworthily associated with them in the quarter of the Union to which I
have referred. The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment,
uttered even on the floor of this house, "peaceably if we can, forcibly
if we must," nearly at the very time Henry's mission was undertaken. The
flagitiousness of that embassy had been attempted to be concealed by
directing the public attention to the price which, the gentleman says,
was given for the disclosure. As if any price could change the
atrociousness of the attempt on the part of Great Britain, or could
extenuate, in the slightest degree, the offence of those citizens, who
entertained and deliberated on a proposition so infamous and unnatural *
* * But, sir, I will quit this unpleasant subject. * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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