Part 164

For my part, I will never go to war but in self-defence. I have no desire for conquests--no ambition to possess Nova Scotia. I hold the liberties of this people at a higher rate. Much more am I indisposed to war, when, among the first means for carrying it on, I see gentlemen propose the confiscation of debts due by Government to individuals. Does a bona fide creditor know who holds his paper? Dare any honest man ask himself the question? ’Tis hard to say whether such principles are more detestably dishonest, than they are weak and foolish. What, sir, will you go about with proposals for opening a loan in one hand, and a sponge for the national debt in the other? If, on a late occasion, you could not borrow at a less rate of interest than eight per cent., when the Government avowed that they would 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 go to war for this excrescence of the carrying trade, and make peace at the expense of the constitution. Your Executive will lord it over you, and you must make the best terms with the conqueror that you can. But the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. GREGG) tells you that he is for acting in this, as in all things, uninfluenced by the opinion of any minister whatever--foreign, or, I presume, domestic. On this point I am willing to meet the gentleman--am unwilling to be dictated 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 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, profitable, 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.

Mr. Chairman, if I felt less regard for what I deem the best interests of this nation than for my own reputation, I should not, on this day, have offered to address you, but would have waited to come out, bedecked with flowers and bouquets of rhetoric, in a set speech. But, sir, I dreaded lest a tone might be given to the mind of the committee--they will pardon me, but I did fear, from all that I could see or hear, that they might be prejudiced by its advocates, (under pretence of protecting our commerce,) in favor of this ridiculous 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 antagonizing 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 sea. 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.

I am perfectly sensible and ashamed of the trespass I am making on the patience of the committee; but as I know not whether it will be in my power to trouble them again on this subject, I must beg leave to continue my crude and desultory observations. I am not ashamed to confess that they are so. At the commencement of this session, we received a printed Message from the President of the United States, breathing a great deal of national honor, and indignation at the outrages we had endured, particularly from Spain. She was specially named and pointed at. She had pirated upon your commerce, imprisoned your citizens, violated your actual territory; invaded the very limits solemnly established between the two nations by the Treaty of San Lorenzo. Some of the State Legislatures (among others the very State on which the gentleman from Pennsylvania relies for support) sent forward resolutions pledging 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.

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 shrinking from the Spanish jackall, do you presume to bully the British lion? But here the secret comes out. Britain is your rival in trade, and governed as you are by counting-house politician; you would sacrifice the paramount interests of the country, to wound that rival. For Spain and France you are carriers, and from good customers every indignity is to be endured. And what is the nature of this trade? Is it that carrying trade which sends abroad the flour, tobacco, cotton, beef, pork, fish, and lumber of this country, and brings back in return foreign articles necessary for our existence or comfort? No, sir, it is a trade carried on--the Lord knows where, or by whom; now doubling Cape Horn, now the Cape of Good Hope. I do not say that there is no profit in it--for it would not then be pursued--but it is a trade that tends to assimilate our manners and Government to those of the most corrupt 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 free to answer it will not, it cannot last. I am not so afraid of the fair, open, constitutional, responsible influence of Government, but I shrink intuitively from this left-handed, invisible, irresponsible influence, which defies the touch, but pervades and decides every thing. Let the Executive come forward to the Legislature; let us see while we feel it. If we cannot rely on its wisdom, is it any disparagement to the gentleman from Pennsylvania to say that I cannot rely upon him? No, sir, he has mistaken his talent. He is not the Palinurus on whose skill the nation, at this trying moment, can repose their confidence. I will have nothing to do with his paper, much less will I endorse it, and make myself responsible for its goodness. I will not put my name to it. I assert that there is no Cabinet, no system, no plan; that which I believe in one place, I shall never hesitate to say in another. This is no time, no place, for mincing our steps. The people have a right to know; they shall know the state of their affairs; at least, as far as I am at liberty to communicate them. I speak from personal knowledge. Ten days ago there had been no consultation; there existed no opinion in your Executive department; at least, none that was avowed. On the contrary, there was an express disavowal of any opinion whatsoever, on the great subject before you; and I have good reason for saying that none has been formed since. Some time ago, a book was laid on our tables, which, like some other bantlings, did not bear the name of its father. Here I was taught to expect a solution of all doubts, an end to all our difficulties. If, sir, I were the foe--as I trust I am the friend of this nation--I would exclaim, “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!” At the very outset, in the very first page, I believe, there is a complete abandonment of the principle in dispute. Has any gentleman got the work? [It was handed by one of the members.] The first position taken is the 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 deserve attention in deciding it.” Here, sir, is an apology of the writer for not disclosing the whole extent of his learning, (which might have overwhelmed the reader,) is the admission that a change of circumstances, (“in the course of commerce,”) has made (and, therefore, will now justify) a total change of the law of nations. What more could the most inveterate advocate of English usurpation demand? What else can they require to establish all, and even more than they contend for? Sir, there is a class of men--we know them very well--who, if you only permit them to lay the foundation, will build you up, step by step, and brick by brick, very neat and showy, if not tenable arguments. To detect them, it is only necessary to watch their premises, where you will often find the point at issue surrendered, as in this case it is.

Again: Is the mare liberum any where asserted in this book, that free ships make free goods? No, sir; the right of search is acknowledged; that enemy’s property is lawful prize, is sealed and delivered. And, after abandoning these principles, what becomes of the doctrine that a mere shifting of the goods from one ship to another, the touching at another port, changes the property? Sir, give up this principle, and there is an end to the question. You lie at the mercy of the conscience of a Court of Admiralty. Is Spanish sugar, or French coffee, made American property, by the mere change of the cargo, or even by the landing and payment of the duties? Does this operation effect a change of property? And when those duties are drawn back, and the sugar and coffee re-exported, are they not (as enemy’s property) liable to seizure upon the principles of the “Examination of the British doctrine,” &c.? And, is there not the best reason to believe, that this operation is performed in many, if not in most cases, to give a neutral aspect and color to the merchandise?

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 notice 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 Buonaparte, nor put into his hands what will enable him to wield the world, and on the very principle that I wished success to the French arms in 1793. And wherefore? Because the case is changed. Great Britain can never again see the year 1760. Her continental influence is gone for ever. Let who will be uppermost on the continent of Europe, she must find more than a counterpoise for her strength. Her race is run. She can only be formidable as a maritime power; and, even as such, perhaps not long. Are you going to justify the acts of the last Administration, for which they have been deprived of the Government at our instance? Are you going back to the ground of 1798-’9? I ask any man who now advocates a rupture with England to assign a single reason for his opinion, that would not have justified a French war in 1798? If injury and insult abroad would have justified it, we had them in abundance then. But what did the Republicans say at that day? That, under the cover of a war with France, the Executive would be armed with a patronage and power which might enable it to master our liberties. They deprecated foreign war and navies, and standing armies, and loans, and taxes. The delirium passed away--the good sense of the people triumphed, and our differences were accommodated without a war. And what is there in the situation of England that invites to war with her? It is true she does not deal so largely in perfectibility, but she supplies you with a much more useful commodity--with coarse woollens. With less profession, indeed, she occupies the place of France in 1793. She is the sole bulwark of the human race against universal dominion; no thanks to her for it. In protecting her own existence, she ensures theirs. I care not who stands in this situation, whether England or Buonaparte. I practise the doctrines now that I professed in 1798. Gentlemen may hunt up the journals if they please; I voted against all such projects under the Administration of John Adams, and I will continue to do so under that of Thomas Jefferson. Are you not contented with being free and happy at home? Or will you surrender these blessings that your merchants may tread on Turkish and Persian carpets, and burn the perfumes of the East in their vaulted rooms? Gentlemen say it is but an annual million lost, and even if it were five times that amount, what is it compared with your neutral rights? Sir, let me tell them a hundred millions will be but a drop in the bucket, if once they launch without rudder or compass into this ocean of foreign warfare. Whom do they want to attack? England. They hope it is a popular thing, and talk about Bunker’s Hill, and the gallant feats of our Revolution. But is Bunker’s Hill to be the theatre of war? No, sir, you have selected the ocean, and the object of attack is that very navy which prevented the combined fleets of France and Spain from levying contribution upon you in your own seas; that very navy which, in the famous war of 1798, stood between you and danger. Whilst the fleets of the enemy were pent up in Toulon, or pinioned in Brest, we performed wonders to be sure; but, sir, if England had drawn off, France would have told you quite a different tale. You would have struck no medals. This is not the sort of conflict that you are to count upon, if you go to war with Great Britain. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. And are you mad enough to take up the cudgels that have been struck from the nerveless hands of the three great maritime powers of Europe? Shall the planter mortgage his little crop, and jeopardize the constitution in support of commercial monopoly, in the vain hope of satisfying the insatiable greediness of trade? Administer the constitution upon its own principles; for the general welfare, and not for the benefit of any particular class of men. Do you meditate war for the possession of Baton Rouge or Mobile, places which your own laws declare to be within your limits? Is it even for the fair trade that exchanges your surplus products for such foreign articles as you require? No, sir, it is for a circuitous trade--an ignis fatuus. And against whom? A nation from whom you have any thing to fear?--I speak as to our liberties. No, sir, with a nation from whom you have nothing, or next to nothing, to fear; to the aggrandizement of one against which you have every thing to dread. I look to their ability and interest, not to their disposition. When you rely on that the case is desperate. Is it to be inferred from all this that I would yield to Great Britain? No. I would act towards her now, as I was disposed to do towards France, in 1798-’9; treat with her, and for the same reason, on the same principles. Do I say I would treat with her? At this moment you have a negotiation pending with her Government. With her you have not tried negotiation and failed, totally failed, as you have done with Spain, or rather France; and, wherefore, under such circumstances, this hostile spirit to the one, and this--I will not say what--to the other?

But a great deal is said about the laws of nations. What is national law but national power guided by national interest? You yourselves acknowledge and practise upon this principle where you can, or where you dare--with the Indian tribes for instance. I might give another and more forcible illustration. Will the learned lumber of your libraries add a ship to your fleet, or a shilling to your revenue? Will it pay or maintain a single soldier? And will you preach and prate of violations of your neutral rights, when you tamely and meanly submit to the violation of your territory? Will you collar the stealer of your sheep, and let him escape that has invaded the repose of your fireside--has insulted your wife and children under your own roof? This is the heroism of truck and traffic--the public spirit of sordid avarice. Great Britain violates your flag on the high seas. What is her situation? Contending, not for the dismantling of Dunkirk, for Quebec, or Pondicherry, but for London and Westminster--for life; her enemy violating at will the territories of other nations, acquiring thereby a colossal power that threatens the very existence of her rival. But she has one vulnerable point to the arms of her adversary, which she covers with the ensigns of neutrality; she draws the neutral flag over the heel of Achilles. And can you ask that adversary to respect it at the expense of her existence? and in favor of whom? An enemy that respects no neutral territory of Europe, and not even your own. I repeat that the insults of Spain towards this nation have been at the instigation of France; that there is no longer any Spain. Well, sir, because the French Government does not put this in the Moniteur, you choose to shut your eyes to it. None so blind as those who will not see. You shut your own eyes, and to blind those of other people, you go into conclave, and slink out again and say, “a great affair of State!”--C’est une grande affaire d’Etat! It seems that your sensibility is entirely confined to the extremities. You may be pulled by the nose and ears, and never feel it, but let your strong box be attacked, and you are all nerve--“Let us go to war!” Sir, if they called upon me only for my little peculium to carry it on, perhaps I might give it; but my rights and liberties are involved in the grant, and I will never surrender them while I have life. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. CROWNINSHIELD) is for sponging the debt. I can never consent to it; I will never bring the ways and means of fraudulent bankruptcy into your committee of supply. Confiscation and swindling shall never be found among my estimates to meet the current expenditure of peace or war. No, sir, I have said with the doors closed, and I say so when the doors are open, “pay the public debt;” get rid of that dead weight upon your Government--that cramp upon all your measures--and then you may put the world at defiance. So long as it hangs upon you, you must have revenue, and to have revenue you must have commerce--commerce, peace. And shall these nefarious schemes be advised for lightening the public burdens; will you resort to these low and pitiful shifts; dare even to mention these dishonest 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 bestiality to an African barbarian?

Gentlemen say that Great Britain will count upon our divisions. How? What does she know of them? Can they ever expect greater unanimity than prevailed at the last Presidential election? No, sir, it is the gentleman’s own conscience that squeaks. But if she cannot calculate upon your divisions, at least she may reckon upon your pusillanimity. She may well despise the resentment that cannot be excited to honorable battle on its own ground; the mere effusion of mercantile cupidity. Gentlemen talk of repealing the British Treaty. The gentleman from Pennsylvania should have thought of that, before he voted to carry it into effect. And what is all this for? A point which Great Britain will not abandon to Russia, you expect her to yield to you--Russia! indisputably the second power of continental Europe; with not less than half a million of hardy troops; with sixty sail-of-the-line, thirty millions of subjects, and a territory more extensive even than our own--Russia, sir, the storehouse of the British Navy, whom it is not more the policy and the interest than the sentiment of that Government to soothe and to conciliate--her sole hope of a diversion on the continent, and her only efficient ally. What this formidable power cannot obtain with fleets and armies, you will command by writ--with pothooks and hangers. I am for no such policy. True honor is always the same. Before you enter into a contest, public or private, be sure you have fortitude enough to go through with it. If you mean war, say so, and prepare for it. Look on the other side; behold the respect in which France holds neutral rights on land; observe her conduct in regard to the Franconian estates of the King of Prussia. I say nothing of the petty powers--of the Elector of Baden, or of the Swiss--I speak of a first-rate Monarchy of Europe, and at a moment, too, when its neutrality was the object of all others nearest to the heart of the French Emperor. If you make him monarch of the ocean, you may bid adieu to it for ever. You may take your leave, sir, of navigation--even of the Mississippi. What is the situation of New Orleans if attacked to-morrow? Filled with a discontented and repining people, whose language, manners, and religion, all incline them to the invader--a dissatisfied people, who despise the miserable Governor you have set over them--whose honest prejudices and basest passions alike take part against you. I draw my information from no dubious source; but from a native American, an enlightened member of that odious and imbecile Government. You have official information that the town and its dependencies are utterly defenceless and untenable. A firm belief that (apprised of this) Government would do something to put the place in a state of security, alone has kept the American portion of that community quiet. You have held that post, you now hold it, by the tenure of the naval predominance of England, and yet you are 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 of contact between our interests, you may be surprised that there has been so little collision. Sir, to the other belligerent nations of Europe your navigation is a convenience, I might say, a necessary. If you do not carry for them they must starve, at least for the luxuries of life, which custom has rendered almost indispensable; and if you cannot act with some degree of spirit towards those who are dependent upon you as carriers, do you reckon to browbeat a jealous rival, who, the moment she lets slip the dogs of war, sweeps you at a blow from the ocean. And cui bono? for whose benefit? The planter? Nothing like it. The fair, honest, real American merchant? No, sir, for renegadoes; to-day American, to-morrow Danes. Go to war when you will, the property, now covered by the American, will then pass under the Danish, or some other neutral flag. Gentlemen say that one English ship is worth three of ours; we shall therefore have the advantage in privateering. Did they ever know a nation to get rich by privateering? This is stuff, sir, for the nursery. Remember that your products are bulky, as has been stated; that they require a vast tonnage to transport them abroad, and that but two nations possess that tonnage. Take these carriers out of the market. What is the result? The manufactures of England, which (to use a finishing touch of the gentlemen’s rhetoric) have received the finishing stroke of art, lie in a small comparative compass. The neutral trade can carry them. Your produce rots in the warehouse. You go to Eustatia or St. Thomas, and get a striped blanket for a joe, if you can raise one. Double freight, charges, and commission. Who receives the profit? The carrier. Who pays it? The consumer. All your produce that finds its way to England, must bear the same accumulated charges--with this difference, that there the burden falls on the home price. I appeal to the experience of the late war, which has been so often cited. What then was the price of produce, and of broadcloth?

But you are told England will not make war; that she has her hands full. Holland calculated in the same way in 1781. How did it turn out? You stand now in the place of Holland, then without her navy, and unaided by the preponderating fleets of France and Spain, to say nothing of the Baltic Powers. Do you want to take up the cudgels where these great maritime States have been forced to drop them? to meet Great Britain on the ocean, and drive her off its face? If you are so far gone as this, every capital measure of your policy has hitherto been wrong. You should have nurtured the old, and devised new systems of taxation, and have cherished your navy. Begin this business when you may, land-taxes, stamp-acts, window-taxes, hearth-money, excise, in all its modifications of vexation and oppression, must precede or follow after. But, sir, as French is the fashion of the day, I may be asked for my projet. I can readily tell gentlemen what I will not do. I will not propitiate any foreign nation with money. I will not launch into a naval war with Great Britain, although I am ready to meet her at the Cowpens or on Bunker’s Hill--and for this plain reason, we are a great land animal, and our business is on shore. I will send her money, sir, on no pretext whatever, much less on pretence of buying Labrador, or Botany Bay, when my real object was to secure limits, which she formally acknowledged at the peace of 1783. I go further: I would (if any thing) have laid an embargo. This would have got our own property home, and our adversary’s into our power. If there is any wisdom left among us, the first step towards hostility will always be an embargo. In six months all your mercantile megrims would vanish. As to us, although it would cut deep, we can stand it. Without such a precaution, go to war when you will, you go to the wall. As to debts, strike the balance to-morrow, and England is I believe in our debt.

I hope, sir, to be excused for proceeding in this desultory course. I flatter myself I shall not have occasion again to trouble you. I know not that I shall be able, certainly not willing, unless provoked in self-defence. I ask your attention to the character of the inhabitants of that Southern country, on whom gentlemen rely for support of their measure. Who and what are they? A simple, agricultural people, accustomed to travel in peace to market with the produce of their labor. Who takes it from us? Another people, devoted to manufactures--our sole source of supply. I have seen some stuff in the newspapers about manufactures in Saxony, and about a man who is no longer the chief of a dominant faction. The greatest man whom I ever knew--the immortal author of the letters of Curtius--has remarked the proneness of cunning people to wrap up and disguise in well-selected phrases, doctrines too deformed and detestable to bear exposure in naked words; by a judicious choice of epithets to draw the attention from the lurking principle beneath, and perpetuate delusion. But a little while ago, and any man might have been proud to have been considered as the head of the Republican party. Now, it seems, it is reproachful to be deemed the chief of a dominant faction. Mark the magic of words. Head--chief. Republican party--dominant faction. But as to the Saxon manufactures. What became of their Dresden china? Why the Prussian bayonets have broken all the pots, and you are content with Worcestershire or Staffordshire ware. There are some other fine manufactures on the continent, but no supply, except perhaps of linens, the article we can best dispense with. A few individuals, sir, may have a coat of Louvier’s cloth, or a service of Sevres china; but there is too little, and that little too dear, to furnish the nation. You must depend on the fur trade in earnest, and wear buffalo hides and bear skins.

Can any man who understands Europe pretend to say that a particular foreign policy is now right because it would have been expedient twenty, or even ten years ago, without abandoning all regard for common sense? Sir, it is the Statesman’s province to be guided by circumstances; to anticipate, to foresee them; to give them a course and a direction; to mould them to his purpose. It is the business of a counting-house clerk to peer into the day-book and ledger, to see no further than the spectacles on his nose, to feel not beyond the pen behind his ear? to chatter in coffee-houses, and be the oracle of clubs. From 1783 to 1793, and even later, (I don’t stickle for dates,) France had a formidable marine--so had Holland--so had Spain. The two first possessed of thriving manufactures and a flourishing commerce. Great Britain, tremblingly alive to her manufacturing interests and carrying trade, would have felt to the heart any measure calculated to favor her rivals in these pursuits. She would have yielded then to her fears and her jealousy alone. What is the case now? She lays an export duty on her manufactures, and there ends the question. If Georgia shall (from whatever cause) so completely monopolize the culture of cotton as to be able to lay an export duty of three per cent. upon it, besides taxing its cultivators, in every other shape, that human or infernal ingenuity can devise, is Pennsylvania likely to rival her and take away the trade?

But, sir, it seems that we, who are opposed to this resolution, are men of no nerve, who trembled in the days of the British treaty--cowards (I presume) in the reign of terror? Is this true? Hunt up the Journals; and let our actions tell. We pursue our old unshaken course. We care not for the nations of Europe, but make foreign relations bend to our political principles and subserve our country’s interest. We have no wish to see another Actium, or Pharsalia, or the lieutenants of a modern Alexander playing at piquet, or all-fours, for the empire of the world. It is poor comfort to us to be told that France has too decided a taste for luxurious things to meddle with us; that Egypt is her object, or the coast of Barbary, and, at the worst, we shall be the last devoured. We are enamored with neither nation; we would play their own game upon them, use them for our interest and convenience. But with all my abhorrence of the British Government, I should not hesitate between Westminster Hall and a Middlesex jury, on the one hand, and the wood of Vincennes and a file of grenadiers, on the other. That jury-trial, which walked with Horne Tooke and Hardy through the flames of ministerial persecution, is, I confess, more to my taste than the trial of the Duke d’Enghein.

Mr. Chairman, I am sensible of having detained the committee longer than I ought; certainly much longer than I intended. I am equally sensible of their politeness, and not less so, sir, of your patient attention. It is your own indulgence, sir, badly requited indeed, to which you owe this persecution. I might offer another apology for these undigested, desultory remarks--my never having seen the Treasury documents. Until I came into the House this morning, I had been stretched on a sick bed. But when I behold the affairs of this nation, instead of being where I hoped, and the people believed, they were, in the hands of responsible men, committed to Tom, Dick and Harry, to the refuse of the retail trade of politics, I do feel, I cannot help feeling, the most deep and serious concern. If the Executive Government would step forward and say, “such is our plan, such is our opinion, and such are our reasons in support of it,” I would meet it fairly, would openly oppose, or pledge myself to support it. But, without compass or polar star, I will not launch into an ocean of unexplored measures, which stand condemned by all the information to which I have access. The Constitution of the United States declares it to be the province and the duty of the President “to give to Congress, from time to time, information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient and necessary.” Has he done it? I know, sir, that we may say, and do say, that we are independent, (would it were true;) as free to give a direction to the Executive as to receive it from him. But do what you will, foreign relations, every measure short of war, and even the course of hostilities, depend upon him. He stands at the helm, and must guide the vessel of State. You give him money to buy Florida, and he purchases Louisiana. You may furnish means; the application of those means rests with him. Let not the master and mate go below when the ship is in distress, and throw the responsibility upon the cook and the cabin-boy. I said so when your doors were shut; I scorn to say less now that they are open. Gentlemen may say what they please. They may put an insignificant individual to the ban of the Republic--I shall not alter my course. I blush with indignation at the misrepresentations which have gone forth in the public prints of our proceedings, public and private. Are the people of the United States, the real sovereigns of the country, unworthy of knowing what, there is too much reason to believe, has been communicated to the privileged spies of foreign governments? I think our citizens just as well entitled to know what has passed as the Marquis Yrujo, who has bearded your President to his face, insulted your Government within its own peculiar jurisdiction, and outraged all decency. Do you mistake this diplomatic puppet for an automaton? He has orders for all he does. Take his instructions from his pocket to-morrow, they are signed “Charles Maurice Talleyrand.” Let the nation know what they have to depend upon. Be true to them, and (trust me) they will prove true to themselves and to you. The people are honest--now at home at their ploughs, not dreaming of what you are about. But the spirit of inquiry, that has too long slept, will be, must be awakened. Let them begin to think--not to say such things are proper because they have been done--of what has been done, and wherefore, and all will be right.

The committee then rose, and the House adjourned.

THURSDAY, March 6.

Non-Importation of British Goods.

The House resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union on Mr. GREGG’s resolution.

Mr. N. WILLIAMS.--The subject now under consideration calls for a display of all the knowledge and experience of commercial men and statesmen. And although I do not profess to be of either class, yet if I should chance to bestow a mite of information upon a subject of such vast importance to this country, it will no doubt be favorably received by this honorable committee.

The resolution now under discussion has for its principal object the protection of the active commerce of our country; it therefore becomes us perhaps, before we enter into the merits of the measure proposed, to inquire whether commerce is of itself so important to us, as to demand our protection. This first inquiry might seem unnecessary, and even extraordinary, had we not witnessed so recently, upon this floor, the very light and trivial manner in which the commerce of this country has been treated, and had we not heard the very strange opinion, that it ought to be left to take care of itself.

It is possible that the agricultural class, which embraces a very great and respectable part of the population of our country, will look for some evidence of the benefits to be derived to them from the protected enterprise of our merchants. Those benefits, however, are so obvious to an attentive observer, that very little need be urged to render them apparent. It has been justly said that agriculture and commerce are handmaids to each other. Indeed, their interests are strongly and durably interwoven. Commerce has a direct tendency to raise the price of the product of the farmer’s labor, by seeking in every part of the world the best markets for our articles of export, and by bringing back and scattering through the country that circulating medium which cherishes industry, and sweetens the toils of the laborer. If we had not an active commerce among our citizens, it is evident that foreign merchants and nations only would be enriched by the profits of our agriculture, would convert us into mere diggers of the soil for their benefit, and would thereby gain the means of insulting and degrading us more abundantly. The price of our produce will lessen in the proportion that we curtail the means of transporting it to the best foreign markets, and the means will assuredly be curtailed if we withdraw our protection from the enterprise of our citizens upon the ocean. Declare to foreign nations that the active commerce of this country meets no longer the fostering care of Government, and you will soon hear of their ten-fold insolence upon the seas; and our vessels, frowned from the enjoyment of their rights there, will find an asylum in our harbors only, where they will be left to rot. The produce of our country must share a similar fate, unless we consent to dispose of it to foreign merchants and speculators, at any price they may please to offer for it. But what is not less important, if we have a regard for morals and happiness, a horrid picture here presents itself; that moment you stagnate the vent of your grain, an extensive inland country will be inundated with whiskey and the destructive vices which flow from the free use of it.

Although important, this is far from being the most important view which may be taken of this subject. It is a conceded point that our Government must by some means or other have revenue. The greatest statesmen and patriots of this country have united, I believe, in considering commerce as our most fruitful source of revenue and riches. It presents a mode of fiscal exaction, the most in union with the spirit and feelings as well as the interests of the American people--that of indirect taxation. By this mode the consumers of articles of foreign growth and manufacture, contribute freely and copiously to the support of our Government, and to that fund which is destined to the payment of the national debt, and this too without feeling in a great degree the weight of the contribution. But the moment, sir, we give up this source of revenue, or expose it to the cupidity and rapacity of foreign powers, a resort to modes of taxation less congenial with the spirit of freedom must be inevitable. Let those who are for giving up this, look about and see what other sources of revenue our country can furnish. Experience, that mother of wisdom, has already instructed us, that excise laws are too odious in many parts of our country to be borne; indeed this source of revenue would at best be trifling. Personal property is of a nature too occult and too liable to shift and change to become a safe and permanent source of revenue. The sale of the public lands, relied on by some, is an expedient which on many accounts will be slow and inefficient; but if the sentiment prevails of leaving commerce to take care of itself, and my notions are correct that such a measure will paralyze the industry of the farmer, it may very justly be doubted, whether our wild lands will meet with a ready market. What then, I would ask, remains, but a land tax, to supply a fund to meet the necessary calls of our Government; a tax so odious in many parts of our country, as to be one of the powerful causes of the overthrow of one administration, and if again resorted to, may possibly produce the destruction of another.

Should considerations like these, thoroughly pursued, prove insufficient to convince gentlemen that the commerce of this country is worthy to be shielded by her protecting arm, I may despair of doing it, perhaps, by any further arguments within my power to adduce. But it is certainly deserving the remembrance of this honorable body, that our Government, by the course it has taken, has long since pledged itself to support the rights and interests of our merchants upon the ocean. Aside of the immense revenues drawn from their enterprise and industry, we may consider the measures alone, adopted by our Government, to protect and guarantee their interests, by compacts with foreign nations and armaments for their defence, as having the direct effect of luring them to embark their property upon the seas with the most implicit security, and with almost a certain assurance that this protection should be continued. In short, I do not see how it can be denied that these privileges are as much entitled to the protection of Government, as those, equally, though not more sacred, which are enjoyed by our fellow-citizens upon land. To relinquish any of them would be taking a step towards a dastardly abandonment of our independence as a nation--and would be announcing to every people on earth, that we have become so tame and submissive, that we are willing to be converted into simple tools and instruments for their use and profit, and to desert the defence of our own sacred rights. Whatever course policy or wisdom might have dictated to this nation à priori respecting commerce, it is evidently too late now to retrace our steps; nay, we cannot do it, short of treachery towards the mercantile interest, and without rendering ourselves a subject of derision and contempt to all Europe. If we shrink on the present occasion from that bold and energetic course which the times seem to call for, what a respectable figure we shall cut in history! This will be our story:--“The American nation, finding her commerce in the Mediterranean pestered by the petty barbarous powers surrounding that sea, blustered and talked manfully like Bobadil in the play. Now this hero was invincible, or he would not have talked so valiantly. ‘Twenty more--kill them! Twenty more--kill them too!’ But the moment their rights upon the ocean were assailed by a nation at once respected and powerful, they meanly shrunk from the contest, and in vain did their admired Executive endeavor to rally the representatives of the people, in support of the firm and dignified measures which he recommended.”

If therefore it is clear, as I trust it is, that commerce is the great supporter of agriculture--that it is at the same time the most rational and most prolific source of revenue and riches to our country, and if, in addition to this, Government has pledged itself to a vast body of respectable citizens, in every part of the United States, to protect their property legally employed in commerce--to say that this commerce shall now be left to take care of itself--of all the insulting mockeries ever offered to this nation, this appears to me the most insulting. But with many, and I do not suffer myself to doubt, with a great majority of this committee, this question may be considered as at rest. Commerce is worthy of our protection. Our natural situation, and the laudable enterprise of our citizens, which leads them into every sea and to every land, have made it ours, and we cannot abandon it without being guilty of the most palpable folly.