But a gentleman tells us that the Administration hold out to us an Eden of the western world, a land flowing with milk and honey, while they have obtained nothing but a dreary and barren wilderness. Perhaps, if the gentleman be correct, the acquisition is scarcely the less important. To demonstrate the advantages of this purchase, it is not necessary to describe Louisiana as an Elysian region--to describe it as Homer does the Fortunate Islands, a region, on whose auspicious climate even winter smiles, where no bleak wind blows from its mountains, and no gale is felt but the zephyr, diffusing health and pleasure. But from geographical information, defective as it is, and from reasonable analogies, we may conclude that, with the exception of some considerable tracts, it is a country fertile and salubrious. Geography points us to China, Persia, India, Arabia Felix, and Japan, countries situated in corresponding latitudes, which, though always overshadowed by the horrid gloom of despotism, are always productive, and teach us by analogy that Louisiana, in natural fertility, is probably equal to those beautiful oriental regions.
The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. PURVIANCE) says, he shall vote for carrying the treaty into effect, because the possession of the territory is important, and the Administration not having, as it ought to have done, made use of men to obtain it, he will consent to make use of money. He has applied many curious epithets to the Administration. He wishes for an Administration _athletic_ and _muscular_, meaning, I suppose, like the wrestlers in the Grecian circus, or the gladiators in that of Rome. When I came within these walls, sir, I ardently hoped that the voice of party would be silent during the discussion of this subject, and I did not expect to hear the Administration attacked in the language of vulgarity, malignity, and factious fury. When it is thus assailed, shall its defenders be silent? During the last session of Congress, an extraordinary degree of agitation was produced in the public mind by an egregious violation of our rights by an officer of the Spanish Government. Neither the people nor the Government were deficient in that spirit which the gentleman extols, but they were not governed by false ideas of national honor, and they were acquainted with the law of nations; they knew that we had no right to make the _denunciatio belli_ precede the _repetitio rerum_--a declaration of war precede a demand for justice.