possible to conceive any measure to be adopted in the situation in
which we then stood, which could more evidently demonstrate our
desire, after repeated provocations, to preserve peace, on any terms
consistent with our safety; or whether any sentiment could now be
suggested which would have more plainly marked our moderation,
forbearance, and sincerity?

In saying this, I am not challenging the applause and approbation
of my country, because I must now confess that we were too slow
in anticipating that danger of which we had, perhaps, even then
sufficient experience, though far short, indeed, of that which we now
possess, and that we might even then have seen, what facts have since
but too incontestably proved, that nothing but vigorous and open
hostility can afford complete and adequate security against
revolutionary principles, while they retain a proportion of power
sufficient to furnish the means of war.

I will enlarge no farther on the origin of the war. I have read and
detailed to you a system which was in itself a declaration of war
against all nations, which was so intended, and which has been so
applied, which has been exemplified in the extreme peril and hazard of
almost all who for a moment have trusted to treaty, and which has not
at this hour overwhelmed Europe in one indiscriminate mass of ruin,
only because we have not indulged, to a fatal extremity, that
disposition, which we have, however, indulged too far; because we have
not consented to trust to profession and compromise, rather than to
our own valour and exertion, for security against a system from which
we never shall be delivered till either the principle is extinguished
or till its strength is exhausted. I might, Sir, if I found it
necessary, enter into much detail upon this part of the subject; but