This circumstance rallied them again to their standard, and hitherto we
have had pretty regular treaty votes on all questions of principle. And
indeed I fear, that as long as the same individuals remain, so long we
shall see traces of the same division. In the House of Representatives
the republican body has also lost strength. The non-attendance of five
or six of that description has left the majority very equivocal indeed.
A few individuals of no fixed system at all, governed by the panic
or the prowess of the moment, flap as the breeze blows against the
republican or the aristocratic bodies, and give to the one or the other
a preponderance entirely accidental. Hence the dissimilar aspect of the
address, and of the proceedings subsequent to that. The inflammatory
composition of the speech excited sensations of resentment which had
slept under British injuries, threw the wavering into the war scale, and
produced the war address. Bonaparte's victories and those on the Rhine,
the Austrian peace, British bankruptcy, mutiny of the seamen, and Mr.
King's exhortations to pacific measures, have cooled them down again,
and the scale of peace preponderates. The threatening propositions
therefore, founded in the address, are abandoned one by one, and the cry
begins now to be, that we have been called together to do nothing.
Pages:
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618