log house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, Wake from
your false security! Your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions, are
soon to be renewed. The wounds yet unhealed are to be torn open again. In
the daytime, your path through the woods will be ambushed. The darkness of
midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a
father--the blood of your sons shall fatten your corn-field. You are a
mother,--the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings. It is
a spectacle of horror which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your
hearts, they will speak a language compared with which all I have said or
can say will be poor and frigid.

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the subject? Who will say that I
exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer by a sneer,
that all this is idle preaching? Would any one deny that we are bound, and
I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the
vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference
to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans irresponsible?
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 pretty 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 in 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