'TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
:streets. When the necessity pleaded is not in the nature of things, but in the vices of him who pleads it, the whining tones of common place beggarly rhetoric, produce nothing but indignation; because they indicate a desire of keeping up a dishonorable existence, without utility to others, and without dignity to itself; because they aim at obtaining the dues of labor without industry or merit; and by frauds would draw irom the compassion of others, what men ought to owe to their own spirit, and their own exertions I am thoroughly satisfied that if we degrade ourselves, it is the degradation which will subject us to the yoke of necessity, and not that it is necessity which has brought on our degradation As the plea filed by his Excellency for this great devia- tion from the constitutional chart; cannot possibly be sustained; either by necessity, prudence, honesty, integrity, fortitude, or in short any of the cardinal virtues; by fair inference then, it can be attributed to nothing but vanity, avarice and cupidity; the most degrading and de- moralizing of all the human passions. If his Excellency had the timerity to make so large a draft on the gullibility of the people (with- out the fear of protest) he may be justly termed, the very pink of vanity .run up to seed. Vanity in a small degree and conversant in little things, is of but little moment. When full grown, as in him, it makes the whole man false. It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. His best qualities are poisoned by it and operate exactly as the worst. He has not observed on the nature of vanity who does not know that it is omniverous; that it has no choice in its food; that it is fond to talk of its own faults and vices, as what will excite sur- prise and draw attention, and what will pass at worst for open candor Nothing indeed but the possession of some power, can with any cer- tainty, discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man His Excellency by his dereliction in his public duty - his abandon- ment of the seat of government, the public archives - the public armaments, leaving all at the mercy of public enemies - to be de- stroyed, by casually, or dilapidated by nezlect - his breach of the pli1.d1ted faith of the government to private indjviduals causing great distress and final ruin - his entire destruction of public credit both at home and abroad-his conspiring with the Congress in secret cabal the de- struction of the Navy, the only remaiµing arm of defence - his de- nouncing the officers and crews of the Navy as pirates by public proc- lamation, whilst on a dangerous cruise against the enemies of the Country, thereby rendering them subject to ignominous deaths, without trial by jury or authority of law;- his denouncing secretly the spartan band of Mier as a banditt, whilst in. the himds of a relentless enemy, who had done honor to themselves, and credit to their Country - his encouraging sedition in the Country of a dangerous character, by using no effort to suppress it:- And by all and singular the abov4:! recited acts, he has thrown the country, from a state of progressive prosperity, into a state of the most abject despondency, by producing distrust and an entire want of confidence (both at home and abroad) in the public faith, and the public institutions of the Country His plea of fear by- fair deductions, is proved not to be a sufficient plea in abatement. And when pled by a man professing to be a lawyer, a patriot, a General. a hero, a statesman, a President, presiding over a young vigorous and patriotic Republic; the craven plea of _fear I Sinks beneath C-Ontempl
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