Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/354

the city, the late Dr. Ashbel Green, who was one of the chaplains of Congress, dined with the President. When he entered the drawing-room he found the company all engaged in animated conversation on this subject, and Washington asked him if he had seen any newspaper allusion to it, remarking that he himself had not. Green replied, that as he was leaving his house, a few moments before, he had picked up a paper, just thrown into his entry, and hastily read an article in which the intelligence was recited. The rumor was calculated to produce a profound sensation, and it was of course discussed with much feeling at the table as well as in the drawing-room, but although the President listened to the conversation and joined in it with apparent freedom, neither Green nor any one could discover whether he thought it true or false, or wished it to be one way or the other. As little turbulence of soul was betrayed in his manner or his countenance as if the debate had been of some abstract question in philosophy.

The democrats, finding themselves unable to answer the arguments of the federalists in support of the treaty, circulated a report through the country that the printed speeches of that side were known to be made by Englishmen, who had come over to work in that way, some at five guineas a speech, and some at as high as ten; but that a speech could be written and printed by them at almost any price.

The great speech upon the treaty, the greatest speech ever made in the Congress of the United States before Daniel Webster came into that body, was by Fisher Ames. Ames had written in a humorous letter to Jeremiah Smith that his speeches should be composed and delivered by some of the ingenious English gentlemen engaged in that business, and Smith had answered that his silence should be permitted, "by me, because any effort will injure your health; by my friend Harper, because he talks all the time him-