In 1810, President Madison believing that the United States had too long acquiesced in the temporary continuance of this territory under Spanish domain, and that nothing was to be gained from Spain by candid discussion and amicable negotiation for several years, solved the difficulty by taking possession of Mobile and Baton Rouge and extending our jurisdiction to the Perdido. This possession, he took means to ensure, if needful, by military force. Mr. Madison's conduct was assailed in congress by the federalists who regarded it as an unjustifiable and offensive demonstration against Spain, but it was defended with equal warmth by the opposition,--especially by Mr. Clay,--and the Rio Perdido has ever since continued to form the western limit of Florida.[96] * * * * * When nations are about to undertake the dread responsibility of war, and to spread the sorrow and ruin which always mark the pathway of victorious or defeated armies, they should pause to contemplate the enormity of their enterprise as well as the principles that can alone justify them in the sight of God and man. Human life cannot be lawfully destroyed, assailed or endangered for any other object than that of just defence of person or principle, yet it is not a legal consequence that defensive wars are always just.[97] "It is the right of a State," said that profound moralist and statesman, Sir James Mackintosh, "to take all measures necessary for her safety if it be attacked or threatened from without: provided always that reparation cannot otherwise be obtained; that there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by arms; and that the evils of the contest are not probably greater than the mischiefs of acquiescence in the wrong; including, on both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary consequences of the example as well as the immediate effects of the act. If reparation can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no necessary, and therefore no just cause of war; if there be no probability of obtaining it by arms, a government cannot, with justice to their own nation, embark it in war; and, if the evils of resistance should appear on the whole greater than those of submission, wise rulers will consider an abstinence from a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred duty to their own subjects, and a debt which every people owes to the great commonwealth of mankind, of which they and their enemies are alike members. A war is just against the wrongdoer when reparation for wrong cannot otherwise be obtained; but is then only conformable to all the principles of morality when it is not likely to expose the nation by whom it is levied to greater evils than it professes to avert, and when it does not inflict on the nation which has done the wrong, sufferings altogether disproportioned to the extent of the injury. When the rulers of a nation are required to determine a question of peace or war, the