progress, what seems to be fiction is found to fall short of experience.

I rose to speak under impressions that I would have resisted if I could.
Those who see me will believe that the reduced state of my health has
unfitted me, almost equally for much exertion of body or mind.
Unprepared for debate, by careful reflection in my retirement, or by
long attention here, I thought the resolution I had taken to sit silent,
was imposed by necesity, and would cost me no effort to maintain. With a
mind thus vacant of ideas, and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of
weakness, I imagined the very desire of speaking was extinguished by the
persuasion that I had nothing to say. Yet, when I come to the moment of
deciding the vote, I start back with dread from the edge of the pit into
which we are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I have spent in
expostulation have their value, because they protract the crisis, and
the short period in which alone we may resolve to escape it.

I have thus been led, by my feelings, to speak more at length than I
intended. Yet I have, perhaps, as little personal interest in the event
as any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will not think his
chance to be a witness of the consequences greater than mine. If,
however, the vote shall pass to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it
will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded,
even I, slender and almost broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive
the government and constitution of my country.




JOHN NICHOLAS