Part 3

NOVEMBER 8, 1808.

The Message and papers were in part read, and one thousand copies ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate.

A confidential Message was also received, with sundry documents therein referred to, which were read for consideration.

WEDNESDAY, November 9.

JESSE FRANKLIN, from the State of North Carolina, attended.

FRIDAY, November 11.

A message from the House of Representatives informed the Senate that the House have appointed the Rev. Mr. BROWN a Chaplain to Congress, on their part, during the present session.

MONDAY, November 14.

JOSEPH ANDERSON, from the State of Tennessee, and ANDREW MOORE, from the State of Virginia, attended.

WEDNESDAY, November 16.

ANDREW GREGG, from the State of Pennsylvania, attended.

MONDAY, November 21.

The Embargo.

This being the day fixed for the discussion of the following resolution, offered by Mr. HILLHOUSE:

Resolved, That it is expedient that the act, entitled "An act laying an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports and harbors of the United States," and the several acts supplementary thereto, be repealed; and that a committee be appointed to prepare and report a bill for that purpose:

Mr. HILLHOUSE opened the debate. When the reporter entered the Senate chamber, Mr. H. had been speaking for a few minutes, and was then discussing the effect which the embargo had had upon France, and the light in which it was viewed by her rulers. He alluded to the declaration of satisfaction at the measure, contained in a late French exposé, and made many observations tending to show that it was not a measure of hostility or coercion, as applied to France.

On England it had little or no effect. Her resources were immense. If deprived of a supply of grain here, she could obtain it elsewhere. The Barbary Powers were at war with France and at peace with England, who might thence obtain wheat in any quantity she pleased. Great Britain, he said, was a nation with the whole world before her; her commerce spread over every sea, and she had access to almost every port and clime. Could America expect to starve this nation? It was a farce, an idle farce. As to her West India Islands, they raised Indian corn; all their sugar plantations could be converted into corn-fields, and would any man say that they would starve because they could not get superfine flour? Was this a necessary of life without which they could not subsist? On the contrary, a great proportion of the American people subsisted on it, and enjoyed as good health as if they ate nothing but the finest of wheat flour. The moment people understood that they could not get their necessary supplies from a customary source, they would look out for it in another quarter, and ample time had been given to them to make arrangements for this purpose. A man of the first respectability in the town in which Mr. H. lived, had been there during this embargo, under the President's permission. What accounts did he bring? Why, that the trade in corn-meal and live cattle, articles of great export from Connecticut, and comprising not only the product of that State, but of parts of the neighboring States, would be entirely defeated; that, where they had formerly sent a hundred hogsheads of meal, they would not now find vent for ten; and that, from South America, where cattle had, in times past, been killed merely for their hides and tallow, cattle in abundance could be procured. Were these people to be starved out, when they could actually purchase cheaper now from other places than they had formerly done from us? No; the only consequence would be, and that too severely felt, that we should lose our market; the embargo thus producing, not only present privation and injury, but permanent mischief. The United States would have lost the chance of obtaining future supplies, they would have lost their market, and ten or twenty years would place them on the same footing as before. Mr. H. said the West Indians would have learnt that they can do without us; that they can raise provisions cheaper on their own plantations than we can sell them; and knowing this, they would never resort to us. Though we might retain a part of this commerce, the best part would be lost forever. The trade would not be worth pursuing; though this might answer one purpose intended by the embargo, and which was not expressed.

Having considered the article of provisions as important to various parts of the Union, Mr. H. said he would now turn to another article, cotton. It had been very triumphantly said, that the want of this article would distress the manufacturers of Great Britain, produce a clamor amongst them, and consequently accelerate the repeal of the Orders in Council. Mr. H. said he would examine this a little, and see if all the evil consequences which opened on him at the time of the passage of the embargo law were not likely to be realized. He had hinted at some of them at that time, but the bill had gone through the Senate like a flash of lightning, giving no time for examination; once, twice, and a third time in one day, affording no time for the development of all its consequences. This article of cotton was used not only by Britain, but by France and other nations on the Continent. Cotton, not being grown in Europe, must be transported by water carriage. This being the case, who would now be most likely to be supplied with it? Not the Continental Powers who have so little commerce afloat nor any neutrals to convey it to them; for the United States were the only neutral which, of late, traded with France, and now the embargo was laid, she had no chance of getting it, except by the precarious captures made by her privateers. To Great Britain, then, was left the whole commerce of the world, and her merchants were the only carriers. Would not these carriers supply their own manufacturers? Would they suffer cotton to go elsewhere, until they themselves were supplied? America was not the only country where cotton was raised; for he had seen an account of a whole cargo brought into Salem from the East Indies, and thence exported to Holland, with a good profit. Cotton was also raised in Africa, as well as elsewhere; and this wary nation, Great Britain, conceiving that the United States might be so impolitic as to keep on the embargo, had carried whole cargoes of the best cotton seed there for the purpose of raising cotton for her use. Great Britain had possessions in every climate on the globe, and cotton did not, like the sturdy oak, require forty or fifty years to arrive at maturity; but, if planted, would produce a plentiful supply in a year. Thus, then, when this powerful nation found America resorting to such means to coerce her, she had taken care to look out for supplies in other quarters; and, with the command of all the cotton on the globe which went to market, could we expect to coerce her by withholding ours? Mr. H. said no; all the inconvenience which she could feel from our measure had already been borne; and Great Britain was turning her attention to every part of the globe to obtain those supplies which she was wont to get from us, that she might not be reduced to the humiliating condition of making concession to induce us to repeal our own law, and purchase an accommodation by telling us that we had a weapon which we could wield to her annoyance. Mr. H. wished to know of gentlemen if we had not experience enough to know that Great Britain was not to be threatened into compliance by a rod of coercion? Let us examine ourselves, said he, for if we trace our genealogy we shall find that we descend from them; were they to use us in this manner, is there an American that would stoop to them? I hope not; and neither will that nation, from which we are descended, be driven from their position, however erroneous, by threats.

This embargo, therefore, instead of operating on those nations which had been violating our rights, was fraught with evils and privations to the people of the United States. They were the sufferers. And have we adopted the monkish plan of scourging ourselves for the sins of others? He hoped not; and that, having made the experiment and found that it had not produced its expected effect, they would abandon it, as a measure wholly inefficient as to the objects intended by it, and as having weakened the great hold which we had on Great Britain, from her supposed dependence on us for raw materials.

Some gentlemen appeared to build up expectations of the efficiency of this system by an addition to it of a non-intercourse law. Mr. H. treated this as a futile idea. They should however examine it seriously, and not, like children, shut their eyes to danger. Great Britain was not the only manufacturing nation in Europe. Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, manufactured more or less, and most of them had colonies, the exclusive supply of whose manufactures they had heretofore reserved to themselves. While we had enjoyed the carrying trade, we had supplied the deficiency in navigation of those nations; and all the inconvenience felt for the want of it ceased because we stepped in and aided them. This trade had been cut up, and perhaps it was not a trade which the energies of the nation should be embarked in defending. Who was there now to supply all these various colonies that used to be supplied by us? None but England, the sole mistress of the ocean. Whose products, then, would Great Britain carry? Would she carry products of other nations, and let her own manufacturers starve? No; and this exclusion from the colonies of other manufactures, and leaving her merchants the sole carriers of the world, produced a greater vent for her manufactures than the whole quantity consumed in the United States.

This, however, was arguing upon the ground that the United States would consume none of her manufactures in case of a non-intercourse. Mr. H. said he was young when the old non-intercourse took place, but he remembered it well, and had then his ideas on the subject. The British army was then at their door, burning their towns and ravaging the country, and at least as much patriotism existed then as now; but British fabrics were received and consumed to almost as great an extent as before the prohibition. The armies could not get fresh provisions from Europe, but they got them here by paying higher prices in guineas for them than was paid by our Government in ragged continental paper money. When the country was in want of clothing, and could get it for one-fourth price from the British, what was the consequence? Why, all the zealous patriots--for this work of tarring and feathering, and meeting in mobs to destroy their neighbor's property, because he could not think quite as fast as they did, which seemed to be coming in fashion now, had been carried on then with great zeal--these patriots, although all intercourse was penal, carried on commerce notwithstanding. Supplies went hence, and manufactures were received from Europe. Now, what reliance could be placed on this patriotism? A gentleman from Vermont had told the Senate at the last session, that the patriotism of Vermont would stop all exportation by land, without the assistance of the law. How had it turned out? Why, patriotism, cannon, militia, and all had not stopped it; and although the field-pieces might have stopped it on the Lakes, they were absolutely cutting new roads to carry it on by land. And yet the gentleman had supposed that their patriotism would effectually stop it! Now, Mr. H. wanted to know how a non-intercourse law was to be executed by us with a coast of fifteen hundred miles open to Great Britain by sea, and joining her by land? Her goods would come through our Courts of Admiralty by the means of friendly captors; they would be brought in, condemned, and then naturalized, as Irishmen are now naturalized, before they have been a month in the country.

Mr. POPE said it had been his opinion this morning that this resolution should have been referred to that committee, but after what had been said, it was his wish that some commercial gentleman, whose knowledge of commercial subjects would enable him to explore the wide field taken by the gentleman from Connecticut, would have answered him. He had hoped, at this session, after the Presidential election was decided, that all would have dismounted from their political hobbies, that they would have been all Federalists, all Republicans, all Americans. When they saw the ocean swarming with pirates, and commerce almost annihilated, he had hoped that the demon of party spirit would not have reared its head within these walls, but that they would all have mingled opinions and consulted the common good. He had heretofore been often charmed with the matter-of-fact arguments of the gentleman from Connecticut; but on this day the gentleman had resorted to arguments from newspapers, and revived all the old story of French influence, in the same breath in which he begged them to discard all party feelings and discuss with candor. The gentleman had gone into a wide field, which Mr. H. said he would not now explore, but begged time till to-morrow, when he would endeavor to show to the nation and to the world that the arguments used by the gentleman in favor of his resolution were most weighty against it. If patriotism had departed the land, if the streams of foreign corruption had flowed so far that the people were ready to rise in opposition to their Government, it was indeed time that foreign intercourse should cease. If the spirit of 1776 were no more--if the spirit of commercial speculation had surmounted all patriotism--if this was the melancholy situation of the United States, it was time to redeem the people from this degeneracy, to regenerate them, to cause them to be born again of the spirit of 1776. But he believed he should be able to show that the proposition of the gentleman from Connecticut hardly merited the respect or serious consideration of this honorable body. Mr. P. said he had expected that in advocating his resolution the gentleman would have told the Senate that we should go to war with Great Britain and France; that he would have risen with patriotic indignation and have called for a more efficient measure. But to his surprise, the gentleman had risen, and with the utmost sang froid told them, let your ships go out, all's well, and nothing is to be apprehended. Mr. P. said he would not go into the subject at this moment; he had but risen to express his feelings on the occasion. He wished the subject postponed, the more because he wished to consult a document just laid on their table, to see how the memorials presented a short time ago from those whose cause the gentleman from Connecticut undertook to advocate, accorded with the sentiments he had this day expressed for them.

Mr. LLOYD said he considered the question now under discussion as one of the most important that has occurred since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. It is a subject, said Mr. L., deeply implicating, and perhaps determining, the fate of the commerce and navigation of our country; a commerce which has afforded employment for nearly a million and a half of tons of navigation; which has found occupation for hundreds of thousands of our citizens; which has spread wealth and prosperity in every region of our country, and which has upheld the Government by furnishing the revenue for its support.

A commerce which has yielded an annual amount of exports exceeding one hundred millions of dollars; an amount of exports three times as great as was possessed by the first maritime and commercial nation of the world at the commencement of the last century, when her population was double that of the United States at this time; an amount of exports equal to what Great Britain, with her navy of a thousand ships, and with all her boasted manufactures, possessed even at so recent a period as within about fifteen years from this date; surely this is a commerce not to be trifled with; a commerce not lightly to be offered up as the victim of fruitless experiment.

Our commerce has unquestionably been subject to great embarrassment, vexation, and plunder, from the belligerents of Europe. There is no doubt but both France and Great Britain have violated the laws of nations, and immolated the rights of neutrals; but there is, in my opinion, a striking difference in the circumstances of the two nations; the one, instigated by a lawless thirst of universal domination, is seeking to extend an iron-handed, merciless despotism over every region of the globe; while the other is fighting for her natale solum, for the preservation of her liberties, and probably for her very existence.

The one professes to reluct at the inconvenience she occasions you by the adoption of measures which are declared to be intended merely as measures of retaliation on her enemies, and which she avows she will retract as soon as the causes which occasion them are withdrawn. The other, in addition to depredation and conflagration, treats you with the utmost contumely and disdain; she admits not that you possess the rights of sovereignty and independence, but undertakes to legislate for you, and declares that, whether you are willing or unwilling, she considers you as at war with her enemy; that she had arrested your property, and would hold it as bail for your obedience, until she knew whether you would servilely echo submission to her mandates.

There is no doubt that the conduct of these belligerents gave rise to the embargo; but if this measure has been proved by experience to be inoperative as it regards them, and destructive only as it respects ourselves, then every dictate of magnanimity, of wisdom, and of prudence, should urge the immediate repeal of it.

The propriety of doing this is now under discussion. The proposition is a naked one; it is unconnected with ulterior measures; and gentlemen who vote for its repeal ought not to be considered as averse from, and they are not opposed to, the subsequent adoption of such other measures as the honor and the interest of the country may require.