of their manly years, the most precious inheritance of their fathers, in the midst of their success, in the moment of the most exquisite perception of commercial prosperity, to be commanded to abandon it, not for a time limited, but for a time unlimited; not until they can be prepared to defend themselves there, (for that is not pretended,) but until their rivals recede from it; not until their necessities require, but until foreign nations permit! I am lost in astonishment, Mr. Chairman. I have not words to express the matchless absurdity of this attempt. I have no tongue to express the swift and headlong destruction, which a blind perseverance in such a system, must bring upon this

nation.

But men from New England, representatives on this floor, equally with myself the constitutional guardians of her interests, differ from me in these opinions. My honorable colleague, (Mr. Bacon,) took occasion, in secret session, to deny that there did exist all that discontent and distress, which I had attempted, in a humble way, to describe. He told us he had travelled in Massachusetts, that the people were not thus dissatisfied, that the embargo had not produced any such tragical effects. Really, sir, my honorable colleague has travelled-all the way from Stockbridge to Hudson; from Berkshire to Boston; from inn to inn; from county court to county court; and doubtless he collected all that important information, which an acute intelligence never fails to retain on such occasions. He found tea, sugar, salt, West India rum and molasses dearer; beef, pork, butter and cheese cheaper. Reflection enabled him to arrive at this difficult result, that in this way the evil and the good of the embargo equalize one another. But has my honorable colleague travelled on the sea-board? Has he witnessed the state of our cities? Has he seen our ships rotting at our wharves, our wharves deserted, our stores tenantless, our streets bereft of active business; industry forsaking her beloved haunts, and hope fled away from places where

she had from carliest time been accustomed to make and to fulfil her most precious promises? Has he conversed with the merchant, and heard the tale of his embarrassments-his capital arrested in his hands, forbidden by your laws to resort to a market, with property four times sufficient to discharge all his engagements, necessitated to hang on the precarious mercy of monied institutions for that indulgence, which preserves him from stopping payment, the first step towards bankruptcy? Has he conversed with our mechanics? That mechanic, who the day before this embargo passed, the very day that you took this bit, and rolled it like a sweet morsel under your tongue, had more business than he had hands, or time or thought to employ in it, now soliciting, at reduced prices, that employment which the rich, owing to the uncertainty in which your laws have involved their capital, cannot afford? I could heighten this picture. I could show you laboring poor in the almshouse, and willing industry dependent upon charity. But I confine myself to particulars, which have fallen under my own observation, and of which ten thousand suffering individuals on the sea-board of New England, are living witnesses that here is nothing fictitious.

Mr. Chairman, other gentlemen must take their responsibilities; I shall take mine. This embargo must be repealed. You cannot enforce it for any important period of time longer. When I speak of your inability to enforce this law, let not gentlemen misunderstand me. I mean not to intimate insurrections or open defiances of them. Although it is impossible to foresee in what acts, that "oppression" will finally terminate, which, we are told, "makes wise men mad." I speak of an inability resulting from very different causes. The gentleman from North Carolina, (Mr. Macon,) exclaimed the other day in a strain of patriotic ardor, "What! shall not our laws be executed? Shall their authority be defied? I am for enforcing them at every hazard." I honor that gentleman's zeal; and I mean no

deviation from that true respect I entertain for him, when I tell him, that in this instance, "his zeal is not according to knowledge."

I ask this House, is there no control to its authority, is there no limit to the power of this national legislature? I hope I shall offend no man, when I intimate that two limits exist;-nature and the constitution. Should this House undertake to declare, that this atmosphere should no longer surround us, that water should cease to flow, that gravity should not hereafter operate, that the needle should not vibrate to the pole, I do suppose, Mr. Chairman-sir, I mean no disrespect to the authority of this House, I know the high notions some gentlemen entertain on this subject;-I do suppose -sir, I hope I shall not offend;-I think I may venture to affirm, that such a law to the contrary notwithstanding, the air would continue to circulate, the Mississippi, the Hudson and the Potomac would roll their floods to the ocean, heavy bodies continue to descend, and the mysterious magnet hold on its course to its celestial

cynosure.

Just as utterly absurd and contrary to nature is it, to attempt to prohibit the people of New England, for any considerable length of time, from the ocean. Commerce is not only associated with all the feelings, the habits, the interests and relations of that people, but the nature of our soil, and of our coasts, the state of our population and its mode of distribution over our territory, renders it indispensable. We have five hundred miles of sea-coast; all furnished with harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, basins, with every variety of invitation to the sea, with every species of facility to violate such laws as these. Our people are not scattered over an immense surface, at a solemn distance from each other, in lordly retirement, in the midst of extended plantations and intervening wastes: they are collected on the margin of the ocean, by the sides of rivers, at the heads of bays, looking into the water or on the surface of it for the incitement and the reward of

their industry. Among a people thus situated, thus educated, thus numerous, laws, prohibiting them from the exercise of their natural rights, will have a binding effect, not one moment longer, than the public sentiment supports them. Gentlemen talk of twelve revenue cutters additional to enforce the embargo laws. Multiply the number by twelve, multiply it by an hundred, join all your ships of war, all your gun boats, and all your militia, in despite of them all, such laws as these are of no avail when they become odious to public sentiment. Continue these laws any considerable time longer, and it is very doubtful, if you will have officers to execute, juries to convict, or purchasers to bid for your confiscations. Cases have begun to occur. Ask your revenue officers, and they will tell you that already at public sales in your cities, under these laws, the owner has bought his property at less than four per cent. upon the real value. Public opinion begins to look, with such a jealous and hateful eye, upon these laws, that even self-interest will not co-operate to enforce their penalties.

But where is our love of order-where our respect for the laws? Let legislators beware, lest by the very nature of their laws, they weaken that sentiment of respect for them, so important to be inspired, and so difficult to be reinstated when it has once been driven from the mind. Regulate not the multitude to their ruin. Disgust not men of virtue by the tendency of your laws, lest when they cannot yield them the sanction of their approbation, the enterprizing and the necessitous find a principal check upon their fears of violating them, removed. It is not enough for men in place to exclaim, "the worthless part of society." Words cannot alter the nature of things. You cannot identify the violator of such laws as these, in our part of the country, for any great length of time, with the common smuggler, nor bring the former down to the level of the latter. The reason is obvious. You bring the duties, the citizen owes to society, into competition, not only with

the strongest interests, but which is more, with the most sacred private obligations. When you present to the choice of a citizen, bankruptcy, a total loss of the accumulated wealth of his whole life, or a violation of a positive law, restrictive of the exercise of the most common rights, it presents to him a most critical alternative. I will not say how sublime casuists may decide. But it is easy to foretell that nature will plead too strong in the bosom to make obedience long possible. I state no imaginary case. Thousands in New England see, in the continuance of this embargo and in obedience to it, irremediable ruin to themselves and families. But where is our patriotism? Sir, you call upon patriotism for sacrifices, to which it is unequal; and require its operation in a way, in which that passion cannot long subsist. Patriotism is a great comfort to men in the interior; to the farmer and the planter, who are denied a market by your laws, whose local situation is such, that they can neither sell their produce, nor scarcely give it away, and who are made to believe that their privations will ultimately redound to the benefit of the country. But on the sea-board, where men feel, not only their annual profit, but their whole capital perishing, where they know the utter inefficacy of your laws to coerce foreign nations, and their utter futility as a mean of saving our own property: to such laws, in such a situation, patriotism is, to say the least, a very inactive assistant. You cannot lay a man upon the rack, and crack his muscles by a slow torment, and call patriotism to soothe the sufferer.

But there is another obstacle to a long and effectual continuance of this law-the doubt, which hangs over its constitutionality. I know I shall be told, that the sanction of the judiciary has been added to this act of the legislature. Sir, I honor that tribunal. I revere the individual whose opinion declared, in this instance, the constitutionality of the law. But it is one thing to venerate our courts of justice; it is one thing to deem this law obligatory upon the citizen, while it