duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for
unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Have
the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings
no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle
declamation introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or
to furnish petty topics of harangue from the windows of that
state-house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask.
Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk without guilt and
without remorse.

It is vain to offer as an excuse, that public men are not to be
reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue from their measures.
This is very true where they are unforeseen or inevitable. Those I have
depicted are not unforeseen; they are so far from inevitable, we are
going to bring them into being by our vote. We choose the consequences,
and become as justly answerable for them as for the measures that we
know will produce them.

By rejecting the posts we light the savage fires--we bind the victims.
This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom
our decision will make, to the wretches that will be roasted at the
stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to
conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if duty be any thing more
than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bug-bear, we are
preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country.

There is no mistake in this case--there can be none. Experience has
already been the prophet of events, and the cries of future victims have
already reached us. The Western inhabitants are not a silent and
uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of