Even Langdon Cheves, the new member from South Carolina, maintained that the United States could no longer break their compact with the Emperor. “Was it not better,” he asked, “that the nation should preserve all it had left,--its good faith? Its property and honor had been sacrificed, and all that was left was its good faith.” Cheves admitted that his doctrine of “good faith” had an ulterior motive, which was to force a conflict with England. “He had never been satisfied with the wisdom or propriety of the law of May last in any other view than one. He believed it would make the country act a part worthy of its character; it would precipitate us on a particular enemy,--and this, he believed, the country required.” He went so far as to assert “that the decrees were removed, and that if the violation of our rights continued to-morrow, yet the decrees were so revoked on the 1st of November last as that they did cease to violate our commerce. If our rights are now violated, it is a violation independent of the decrees, by the mere will of an arbitrary and powerful government.” Rhea of Tennessee went further still. “If any compact,” said he, “can be of greater dignity than a treaty, the law of May 1, made by the constituted authorities of the United States, and agreed to and acted on by the constituted authorities of France, forms that compact.” When one nation is agreed in the policy of fighting another any pretext will answer, and Government need not even be greatly concerned to give any reason at all; but in the condition of America in 1810, grave dangers might result from setting aside the four or five just issues of war with England in order to insist on an issue that revolted common-sense. If ingenuity had been provoked to suggest the course which would rouse most repugnance in the minds of the largest possible number of Americans, no device better suited for its purpose than the theory of Eppes, Cheves, and Rhea could have been proposed; and if they wished to exasperate the conscience of New England in especial to fanatical violence, they came nearest their end by insisting on an involuntary, one-sided compact, intended to force Massachusetts and Connecticut to do the will of the man whom a majority of the people in New England seriously regarded as anti-Christ. Even on the floor of the House no Republican could stand a moment before John Randolph without better protection than this compact with France, which France herself did not recognize.