at home reaping their own fields-the fruits of their labor and industry-there is little danger of their being induced to go sixteen or seventeen hundred miles in pursuit of beavers, raccoons, or opossums, much less of going to war for the privilege. They are better employed where they are. This trade, sir, may be important to Britain, to nations who have exhausted every resource of industry at home, bowed down by taxation and wretchedness. Let them, in God's name, if they please, follow the fur trade. They may, for me, catch every beaver in North America. Yes, sir, our people have a better occupation-a safe, prof itable, honorable employment. While they should be engaged in distant regions in hunting the beaver, they dread lest those whose natural prey they are should begin to hunt them, should pillage their property, and assassinate their Constitution. Instead of these wild schemes, pay off your debt, instead of prating about its confiscation. Do not, I beseech you, expose at once your knavery and your folly. You have more lands than you know what to do with, you have lately paid fifteen millions for yet more. Go and work them, and cease to alarm the people with the cry of wolf, until they become deaf to your voice, or at least laugh at you.

pay to the last shilling of the public ability, at what price do you expect to raise money with an avowal of these nefarious opinions? God help you, if these are your ways and means for carrying on war! if your finances are in the hands of such a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Because a man can take an observation, and keep a log-book and a reckoning; can navigate a cock-boat to the West Indies, or the East, shall he aspire to navigate the great vessel of State-to stand at the helm of public councils? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. What are you going to war for? For the carrying trade? Already you possess seven-eighths of it. What is the object in dispute? The fair, honest trade, that exchanges the product of our soil for foreign articles for home consumption? Not at all. You are called upon to sacrifice this necessary branch of your navigation, and the great agricultural interest-whose handmaid it is-to jeopardize your best interests for a circuitous commerce, for the fraudulent protection of belligerent property under your neutral flag. Will you be goaded, by the dreaming calculations of insatiate avarice, to stake your all for the protection of this trade? I do not speak of the probable effects of war on the price of our produce. Severely as we must feel, we may scuffle through it. I speak of its reaction on the Constitution. You may Mr. Chairman, if I felt less regard for what I go to war for this excrescence of the carrying deem the best interests of this nation than for my trade, and make peace at the expense of the Con- own reputation, I should not, on this day, have stitution. Your Executive will lord it over you, offered to address you, but would have waited to and you must make the best terms with the con- come out, bedecked with flowers and boquets of queror that you can. But the gentleman from rhetoric, in a set speech. But, sir, I dreaded lest Pennsylvania (Mr. GREGG) tells you that he is for a tone might be given to the mind of the comacting in this, as in all things, uninfluenced by the mittee-they will pardon me, but I did fear, from opinion of any Minister whatever-foreign, or, I all that I could see or hear, that they might be presume, domestic. On this point I am willing prejudiced by its advocates, (under pretence of to meet the gentleman-am unwilling to be dic-protecting our commerce) in favor of this ridicutated to by any Minister, at home or abroad. Is he willing to act on the same independent footing? I have before protested, and I again protest against secret, irresponsible, overruling influence. The first question I asked when I saw the gentleman's resolution, was, "Is this a measure of the Cabinet?" Not of an open declared Cabinet; but, of an invisible, inscrutable, unconstitutional Cabinet, without responsibility, unknown to the Constitution. I speak of back-stairs influence of men who bring messages to this House, which, although they do not appear on the Journals, govern its decisions. Sir, the first question that I asked on the subject of British relations, was, What is the opinion of the Cabinet? What measures will they recommend to Congress?(well knowing that whatever measures we might take, they must execute them, and therefore, that we should have their opinion on the subject.) My answer was. (and from a Cabinet Minister too,)" There is no longer any Cabinet." Subsequent circumstances, sir, have given me a personal knowledge of the fact. It needs no commentary. But the gentleman has told you that we ought to go to war, if for nothing else, for the fur trade. Now, sir, the people on whose support he seems to calculate, follow, let me tell him, a better business, and let me add, that whilst men are happy

lous and preposterous project; I rose, sir, for one, to plead guilty; to declare in the face of day that I will not go to war for this carrying trade. I will agree to pass for an idiot if this is not the public sentiment, and you will find it to your cost, begin the war when you will.

Gentlemen talk of 1793. They might as well go back to the Trojan war. What was your situation then? Then every heart beat high with sympathy for France, for republican France! I am not prepared to say, with my friend from Pennsylvania, that we were all ready to draw our swords in her cause, but I affirm that we were prepared to have gone great lengths. I am not ashamed to pay this compliment to the hearts of the American people, even at the expense of their understandings. It was a noble and generous sentiment, which nations like individuals are never the worse for having felt. They were, I repeat it, ready to make great sacrifices for France. And why ready? Because she was fighting the battles of the human race against the combined enemies of their liberty; because she was performing the part which Great Britain now, in fact, sustains, forming the only bulwark against universal dominion. Knock away her Navy, and where are you? Under the naval despotism of France, unchecked and unqualified by any an

H. OF R.

sea.

Non-Importation of Goods from Great Britain.

tagonizing military power; at best but a change of masters. The tyrant of the ocean, and the tyrant of the land, is one and the same, lord of all, and who shall say him nay, or wherefore doest thou this thing? Give to the tiger the properties of the shark, and there is no longer safety for the beasts of the forest or the fishes of the Where was this high anti-Britannic spirit of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, when his vote would have put an end to the British treaty, that pestilent source of evil to this country? and at a time, too, when it was not less the interest than the sentiment of this people to pull down Great Britain and exalt France. Then, when the gentleman might have acted with effect, he could not screw his courage to the sticking place. Then England was combined in what has proven a feeble, inefficient coalition, but which gave just cause of alarm to every friend of freedom. Now the liberties of the human race are threatened by a single Power, more formidable than the coalesced world, to whose utmost ambition, vast as it is, the naval force of Great Britain forms the only obstacle.

MARCH, 1806.

But, sir, why do I talk of Spain? There are no longer Pyrenees. There exists no such nation, no such being as a Spanish King, or Minister. It is a mere juggle, played off for the benefit of those who put the mechanism into motion. You know, sir, that you have no differences with Spain; that she is the passive tool of a superior Power, to whom, at this moment, you are crouching. Are your differences, indeed, with Spain? And where are you going to send your political panacea, resolutions and handbills excepted, your sole arcanum of Government, your king cure all? To Madrid? No-you are not such quacks as not to know where the shoe pinches to Paris. You know, at least, where the disease lies, and there you apply your remedy. When the nation anxiously demands the result of your deliberations, you hang your head and blush to tell. You are afraid to tell. Your mouth is hermetically sealed. Your honor has received a wound which must not take air. Gentlemen dare not come forward and avow their work, much less defend it in the presence of the nation. Give them all they ask, that Spain exists-and what then? After shrinkI am perfectly sensible and ashamed of the tres- ing from the Spanish jackall, do you presume to pass I am making on the patience of the Commit- bully the British lion? But here the secret comes tee; but as I know not whether it will be in my out. Britain is your rival in trade, and governed power to trouble them again on this subject, I must as you are by counting-house politicians, you beg leave to continue my crude and desultory ob- would sacrifice the paramount interests of the servations. I am not ashamed to confess that they country, to wound that rival. For Spain and are so. At the commencement of this session, we France you are carriers, and from good customreceived a printed Message from the President of ers every indignity is to be endured. And what the United States, breathing a great deal of na- is the nature of this trade? Is it that carrying tional honor, and indignation at the outrages we trade which sends abroad the flour, tobacco, cothad endured, particularly from Spain. She was ton, beef, pork, fish, and lumber of this country, specially named and pointed at. She had pirated and brings back in return foreign articles necesupon your commerce, imprisoned your citizens, sary for our existence or comfort? No, sir, it is violated your actual territory; invaded the very a trade carried on-the Lord knows where, or by limits solemnly established between the two na- whoin; now doubling Cape Horn, now the Cape tions by the Treaty of San Lorenzo. Some of of Good Hope. I do not say that there is no the State Legislatures, (among others the very profit in it-for it would not then be pursued— State on which the gentleman from Pennsylvania but it is a trade that tends to assimilate our manrelies for support,) sent forward resolutions pledg-ners and Government to those of the most coring their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, in support of any measures you might take in vindication of your injured rights. Well, sir, what have you done? You have had resolutions laid upon your table, gone to some expense of printing and stationery-mere pen, ink, and paper, that's all. Like true political quacks, you deal only in handbills and nostrums. Sir, I blush to see the record of our proceedings; they resemble nothing but the advertisements of patent medicines. Here you have "the worm destroying lozenges," there "Church's cough drops ;" and, to crown the whole, "Sloan's vegetable specific," an infallible remedy for all nervous disorders and vertigoes of brain-sick politicians; each man earnestly adjuring you to give his medicine only a fair trial. If, indeed, these wonder-working nostrums could perform but one-half of what they promise, there is little danger of our dying a political death, at this time at least. But, sir, in politics as in physics, the doctor is ofttimes the most dangerous disease; and this I take to be our case at present.

rupt countries of Europe. Yes, sir, and when a question of great national magnitude presents itself to you, it causes those who now prate about national honor and spirit to pocket any insult; to consider it as a mere matter of debit and credit; a business of profit and loss, and nothing else.

The first thing that struck my mind, when this resolution was laid on the table, was unde derivatur? A question always put to us at school. Whence comes it? Is this only the putative father of the bantling he is taxed to maintain, or, indeed, the actual parent, the real progenitor of the child? Or, is it the production of the Cabinet? But, I knew you had no Cabinet, no system. I had seen despatches relating to vital measures laid before you the day after your final decision on those measures, four weeks after they were received; not only their contents, but their very existence, all that time unsuspected and unknown to men whom the people fondly believe assist with their wisdom and experience at every important deliberation. Do you believe that this system, or rather this no-system, will do? I am

MARCH, 1806.

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H. OF R.

free to answer it will not, it cannot last. I am not serve attention in deciding it." Here, sir, is an so afraid of the fair, open, Constitutional, respon- apology of the writer for not disclosing the whole sible influence of Government, but I shrink intu-extent of his learning, (which might have overitively from this left-handed, invisible, irresponsi-whelmed the reader) is the admission that a ble influence, which defies the touch, but pervades change of circumstances, ("in the course of comand decides everything. Let the Executive come merce,") has made (and, therefore, will now jusforward to the Legislature; let us see while weify) a total change of the law of nations. What feel it. If we cannot rely on its wisdom, is it anymore could the most inveterate advocate of Engdisparagement to the gentleman from Pennsylva-lish usurpation demand? What else can they. nia to say that I cannot rely upon him? No, sir, require to establish all, and even more than they he has mistaken his talent. He is not the Pali-contend for? Sir, there is a class of men-we nurus on whose skill the nation, at this trying know them very well-who, if you only permit moment, can repose their confidence. I will have them to lay the foundation, will build you up, step nothing to do with his paper, much less will I by step, and brick by brick, very neat and showy, endorse it, and make myself responsible for its if not tenable arguments. To detect them, it is goodness. I will not put my name to it. I assert only necessary to watch their premises, where that there is no Cabinet, no system, no plan; that you will often find the point at issue surrendered, which I believe in one place, I shall never hesi- as in this case it is. tate to say in another. This is no time, no place, Again Is the mare liberum anywhere asserted for mincing our steps. The people have a right in this book, that free ships make free goods? No, to know; they shall know the state of their af-sir; the right of search is acknowledged; that fairs; at least, as far as I am at liberty to commu- enemy's property is lawful prize, is sealed and denicate them. I speak from personal knowledge.livered. And, after abandoning these principles, Ten days ago there had been no consultation; what becomes of the doctrine that a mere shifting there existed no opinion in your Executive de- of the goods from one ship to another, the touchpartment; at least, none that was avowed. On ing at another port, changes the property? Sir, the contrary, there was an express disavowal of give up this principle, and there is an end of the any opinion whatsoever, on the great subject be- question. You lie at the mercy of the conscience fore you; and I have good reason for saying that of a Court of Admiralty. Is Spanish sugar, or none has been formed since. Some time ago, a French coffee, made American property, by the book was laid on our tables, which, like some mere change of the cargo, or even by the landing other bantlings, did not bear the name of its fa- and payment of the duties? Does this operation ther. Here I was taught to expect a solution of effect a change of property? And when those all doubts, an end to all our difficulties. If, sir, I duties are drawn back, and the sugar and coffee were the foe-as I trust I am the friend of this re exported, are they not (as enemy's property) nation-I would exclaim, "Oh, that mine enemy liable to seizure upon the principles of the "Exwould write a book!" At the very outset, in the amination of the British doctrine," &c.? And, is very first page, I believe, there is a complete aban- there not the best reason to believe, that this opedonment of the principle in dispute. Has any ration is performed in many, if not in most cases, gentleman got the work? [It was handed by one to give a neutral aspect and color to the merchanof the members.] The first position taken is the dise? broad principle of the unlimited freedom of trade between nations at peace, which the writer endeavors to extend to the trade between a neutral and a belligerent Power, accompanied, however, by this acknowledgment: "But, inasmuch as the 'trade of a neutral with a belligerent nation, 'might, in certain special cases, affect the safety ' of its antagonist, usage, founded on the principle ' of necessity, has admitted a few exceptions to 'the general rule." Whence comes the doctrine of contraband, blockade, and enemy's property? Now, sir, for what does that celebrated pamphlet, "War in Disguise"-which is said to have been written under the eye of the British Prime Minister-contend, but this "principle of necessity?" And this is abandoned by this pamphleteer at the very threshold of the discussion. But, as if this were not enough, he goes on to assign as a reason for not referring to the authority of the ancients, "that the great change which has taken ' place in the state of manners, in the maxims of war, and in the course of commerce, make it "pretty certain" (what degree of certainty is this?) "that either nothing will be found relating to the ' question, or nothing sufficiently applicable to de

I am prepared, sir, to be represented as willing to surrender important rights of this nation to a foreign Government. I have been told that this sentiment is already whispered in the dark, by time-servers and sycophants. But, if your Clerk dared to print them, I would appeal to your Journals. I would call for the reading of them, but that I know they are not for profane eyes to look upon. I confess that I am more ready to surrender to a naval Power a square league of ocean, than to a territorial one, a square inch of land within our limits; and I am ready to meet the friends of the resolution on this ground at any time.

Let them take off the injunction of secrecy. They dare not. They are ashamed and afraid to do it. They may give winks and nods, and pretend to be wise, but they dare not come out and tell the nation what they have done. Gentlemen may take notes if they please, but I will never, from any motive short of self-defence, enter upon war. I will never be instrumental to the ambitious schemes of Bonaparte, nor put into his hands what will enable him to wield the world, and on the very principle that I wished success to

Non-Importation of Goods from Great Britain.

MARCH, 1806.

Non-Importation of Goods from Great Britain.

H. of R.

the neutral flag over the heel of Achilles. And house of the British Navy, whom it is not more can you ask that adversary to respect it at the ex- the policy and the interest than the sentiment of pense of her existence? and in favor of whom? that Government to soothe and to conciliate-her An enemy that respects no neutral territory of sole hope of a diversion on the continent, and her Europe, and not even your own. I repeat that only efficient ally. What this formidable Power the insults of Spain towards this nation have cannot obtain with fleets and armies, you will been at the instigation of France; that there is command by writ-with pothooks and hangers. no longer any Spain. Well, sir, because the I am for no such policy. True honor is always French Government does not put this in the the same. Before you enter into a contest, public Moniteur, you choose to shut your eyes to it. or private, be sure you have fortitude enough to None so blind as those who will not see. You go through with it. If you mean war, say so, and shut your own eyes, and to blind those of other prepare for it. Look on the other side; behold people, you go into conclave, and slink out again the respect in which France holds neutral rights and say, "a great affair of State!"-C'est une grande on land; observe her conduct in regard to the affaire d'Etat! It seems that your sensibility is Franconian estates of the King of Prussia. I say entirely confined to the extremities. You may nothing of the petty Powers of the Elector of be pulled by the nose and ears, and never feel it, Baden, or of the Swiss-I speak of a first rate but let your strong-box be attacked, and you are Monarchy of Europe, and at a moment, too, when all nerve-"Let us go to war!" Sir, if they its neutrality was the object of all others nearest called upon me only for my little peculium to to the heart of the French Emperor. If you carry it on, perhaps I might give it; but my make him monarch of the ocean, you may bid rights and liberties are involved in the grant, and adieu to it forever. You may take your leave, I will never surrender them while I have life. sir, of navigation-even of the Mississippi. What The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. CROWN- is the situation of New Orleans if attacked toINSHIELD) is for sponging the debt. I can never morrow? Filled with a discontented and repinconsent to it; I will never bring the ways and ing people, whose language, manners, and relimeans of fraudulent bankruptcy into your com-gion, all incline them to the invader-a dissatismittee of supply. Confiscation and swindling fied people, who despise the miserable Governor shall never be found among my estimates to meet you have set over them-whose honest prejudices the current expenditure of peace or war. No, and basest passions alike take part against you. I sir, I have said with the doors closed, and I say draw my information from no dubious source; but so when the doors are open, "pay the public from a native American, an enlightened member debt;" get rid of that dead weight upon your of that odious and imbecile Government. You Government-that cramp upon all your meas- have official information that the town and its ures-and then you may put the world at defi- dependencies are utterly defenceless and untenaance. So long as it hangs upon you, you must ble. A firm belief that (apprized of this) Govhave revenue, and to have revenue you must have ernment would do something to put the place in commerce-commerce, peace. And shall these a state of security, alone has kept the American nefarious schemes be advised for lightening the portion of that community quiet. You have held public burdens; will you resort to these low and that post, you now hold it, by the tenure of the pitiful shifts; dare even to mention these dishon-naval predominance of England, and yet you are est artifices to eke out your expenses, when the public treasure is lavished on Turks and infidels, on singing boys and dancing girls, to furnish the means of beastiality to an African barbarian?

for a British naval war.

There are now but two great commercial nations-Great Britain is one, and the United States the other. When you consider the many points Gentlemen say that Great Britain will count of contact between our interests, you may be surupon our divisions. How? What does she know prised that there has been so little collision. Sir, of them? Can they ever expect greater una-to the other belligerent nations of Europe your nimity than prevailed at the last Presidential elec- navigation is a convenience, I might say, a necestion? No, sir, it is the gentleman's own con- sary. If you do not carry for them they must science that squeaks. But if she cannot calculate starve, at least for the luxuries of life, which cusupon your divisions, at least she may reckon upon tom has rendered almost indispensable; and if you your pusillanimity. She may well despise the cannot act with some degree of spirit towards resentment that cannot be excited to honorable those who are dependent upon you as carriers, do battle on its own ground; the mere effusion of you reckon to browbeat a jealous rival, who, the mercantile cupidity. Gentlemen talk of repealing moment she lets slip the dogs of war, sweeps you the British Treaty. The gentleman from Penn- at a blow from the ocean And cui bono? for sylvania should have thought of that, before he whose benefit? The planter? Nothing like it. voted to carry it into effect. And what is all this The fair, honest, real American merchant? No, for? A point which Great Britain will not aban- sir, for renegadoes; to-day American, to-morrow, don to Russia, you expect her to yield to you- Danes. Go to war when you will, the property, Russia! indisputably the second Power of Conti- now covered by the American, will then pass nental Europe; with not less than half a million under the Danish, or some other neutral flag. of hardy troops; with sixty sail-of-the-line, thirty Gentlemen say that one English ship is worth millions of subjects, and a territory more exten- three of ours; we shall therefore have the advansive even than our own-Russia, sir, the store-tage in privateering. Did they ever know a na