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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
Ch. 11.
cut the deeper because its justice could not be denied.
Jefferson's administration was not yet a year old; the Federalists had twelve long years abounding in mistakes and misfortunes to defend, and Giles's arraignment embraced the whole. Bayard accepted the challenge, and his speech, too historical for compression, varied between long periods of defence and brief intervals of attack. The defence belonged to past history; the attack concerned the actual moment, and need alone be noticed here. He began by refusing belief that Giles ever seriously felt the fear of monarchy he expressed; he was led by other motives:—
- "I pray to God I may be mistaken in the opinions I entertain as to the designs of gentlemen to whom I am opposed. Those designs I believe hostile to the powers of this government. State pride extinguishes a national sentiment. Whatever power is taken from this government is given to the States. The ruins of this government aggrandize the States. There are States which are too proud to be controlled, whose sense of greatness and resource renders them indifferent to our protection, and induces a belief that if no general government existed, their influence would be more extensive and their importance more conspicuous. There are gentlemen who make no secret of an extreme point of depression to which the government is to be sunk. To that point we are rapidly progressing."
The charge was certainly emphatic, and deserved as clear an answer from Giles as Bayard gave to the
