“To our humiliation and everlasting degradation we have refused to use the means in our power to induce foreign nations to do us justice.... The annals of human nature have not given to the world the sad example of a nation so powerful, so free, so intelligent, so jealous of their rights and at the same time so grossly insulted, so materially injured, under such extraordinary forbearance.... We are afraid to trust ourselves, and we pretend that we are afraid to trust the people. My hopes have rested and always will rest upon the people; they constitute my last hope. We may disgrace ourselves, but the people will rise in the majesty of their strength, and the world will be interested in the spectacle.” With the advocates of war in a temper so unmanageable, and the advocates of peace in a majority so decisive, the House showed unanimity by passing in committee, without a dissenting voice, a Resolution that the military and naval establishments ought to be reduced. April 16 this vote was reached in committee; and the next day, by a vote of sixty to thirty-one, the Resolution was formally adopted by the House. Of the minority, two thirds were Northern men and all were Republicans. In obedience to the order, Randolph promptly reported a bill for reducing the navy.[152] All the gunboats, all but three of the frigates, and all other armed vessels--three only excepted--were to be sold, their officers and crews discharged; the navy-yards, except at Boston, New York, and Norfolk, to be disused, and the marine corps reduced to two companies. A few days later, April 24, Smilie of Pennsylvania reported a bill for a similar reduction of the military establishment to three regiments. These measures seemed to carry out the express will and orders of the House; but no sooner did the House go into committee than the members astonished themselves by striking out each section in succession. Gunboats, frigates, navy-yards, and marines, each managed in turn to obtain a majority against reduction. Then Randolph rose,--not in wrath, for he spoke with unusual calm, but with a force which warranted the sway he so often exercised over men whose minds were habitually in doubt. He had ever believed, he said, that the people of the United States were destined to become a great naval power, but if anything could prevent this result it would be the premature attempts of the last two Administrations to force it. A naval power necessarily grew out of tonnage and seamen, but both tonnage and seamen had been systematically discouraged:-- “It has always been understood, according to my view of the subject, that one of the principal uses of a navy was to protect commerce; but our political rule for some time past has been that of inverse proportion, and we have discovered that commerce is the natural protector of a navy.”