8549. TREATIES, Power to make.—[further continued] .
If you [House of Representatives]
decide in favor of your right to
refuse cooperation in any case of treaty, I
should wonder on what occasion it is to be
used, if not on one where the rights, the interests,
the honor and faith of our nation are
so grossly sacrificed; where a faction has
entered into a conspiracy with the enemies
of their country to chain down the Legislature
at the feet of both; where the whole
mass of your constituents have condemned
this work in the most unequivocal manner,
and are looking to you as their last hope to
save them from the effects of the avarice
and corruption of the first agent, the revolutionary
machinations of others, and the incomprehensible
acquiescence of the only
honest man who has assented to it. I wish
that his honesty and his political errors May
not furnish a second occasion to exclaim,
“curse on his virtues, they have undone his
country”.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. iv, 135.
Ford ed., vii, 69.
(M.
March. 1796)
