Chapter M: CAMPBELL then rose and spoke as follows (22)

In November, 1793, Great Britain adopted a similar principle with regard to the colonial trade, except that the orders issued at that time went further than the present principle. In consequence of these orders four or five hundred of our vessels were seized. Every one knows the conduct of the American Government at that time. A treaty was finally made in which Great Britain promised to pay for the aggressions committed by her vessels on neutral rights. But nearly ten years elapsed before our merchants received compensation for their losses. This principle slept till 1801. Great Britain did not find it convenient to call it again into existence before that time. It then appears by a correspondence between Mr. King, then our Minister at the Court of Great Britain, and Lord Hawkesbury, that she attempted to renew it at this time. Mr. King, however, remonstrated; and he finally received a note from Lord Hawkesbury who had referred the subject to the Attorney-General of Great Britain, admitting that the seizure, under this principle, was not warrantable. The opinion is this: that the neutral has a right to carry on a commerce with the enemies’ colonies. That the continuity of the voyage is broken when the return cargo is landed in the neutral country, and has paid duties there, and that the goods can afterwards be safely transported to any belligerent country in Europe, in the same bottom on which they were originally imported, or on any other neutral bottom whatever. This appears to have settled the question, and numerous decisions in England both before and since that time have confirmed the principle as a correct one.

As to the impressment of our seamen, that too is a subject of most serious complaint. We have called for a document on this point, which unfortunately is not yet on our tables. It is so extensive, and the information drawn from such various sources, that the Secretary of State has not yet been able to present it. We have, however, understood, that the number of our impressed seamen amounts to above 3,000. During the last war Great Britain impressed upwards of 2,000 of our seamen, of which she restored 1,200, proved to be American, and 800 remained in her possession at the peace. In the short period of two years she has impressed 3,000 seamen. I believe that we are bound, by all peaceable means, to obtain the liberation of these men. Lately, one of our frigates was shipwrecked off Tripoli, and 300 men taken captives. We immediately passed a new appropriation bill, and sent out several additional frigates. The affair has terminated honorably to our country, and our seamen are released. Will we not now do as much for 3,000 seamen, as we then did for 300, which are but a tenth part?

Mr. J. RANDOLPH.--I am extremely afraid, sir, that so far as it may depend on my acquaintance with details connected with the subject, I have very little right to address you, for in truth, I have not yet seen the documents from the Treasury, which were called for some time ago, to direct the judgment of this House in the decision of the question now before you; and, indeed, after what I have this day heard, I no longer require that document or any other document--indeed, I do not know that I ever should have required it--to vote on the resolution of the gentleman from Pennsylvania. If I had entertained any doubts, they would have been removed by the style in which the friends of the resolution have this morning discussed it. I am perfectly aware, that on entering upon this subject, we go into it manacled, handcuffed, and tongue-tied; gentlemen know that our lips are sealed on subjects of momentous foreign relations, which are indissolubly linked with the present question, and which would serve to throw a great light on it in every respect relevant to it. I will, however, endeavor to hobble over the subject, as well as my fettered limbs and palsied tongue will enable me to do it.

I am not surprised to hear this resolution discussed by its friends as a war measure. They say (it is true) that it is not a war measure; but they defend it on principles which would justify none but war measures, and seem pleased with the idea that it may prove the forerunner of war. If war is necessary--if we have reached this point--let us have war. But while I have life, I will never consent to these incipient war measures, which, in their commencement, breathe nothing but peace, though they plunge at last into war. It has been well observed by the gentleman from Pennsylvania behind me (Mr. J. CLAY), that the situation of this nation in 1793 was in every respect different from that in which it finds itself in 1806. Let me ask, too, if the situation of England is not since materially changed? Gentlemen who, it would appear from their language, have not got beyond the horn-book of politics, talk of our ability to cope with the British navy, and tell us of the war of our Revolution. What was the situation of Great Britain then? She was then contending for the empire of the British channel, barely able to maintain a doubtful equality with her enemies, over whom she never gained the superiority until Rodney’s victory of the twelfth of April. What is her present situation? The combined fleets of France, Spain, and Holland, are dissipated, they no longer exist. I am not surprised to hear men advocate these wild opinions, to see them goaded on by a spirit of mercantile avarice, straining their feeble strength to excite the nation to war, when they have reached this stage of infatuation, that we are an over-match for Great Britain on the ocean. It is mere waste of time to reason with such persons. They do not deserve any thing like serious refutation. The proper arguments for such statesmen are a straight waistcoat, a dark room, water gruel, and depletion.

It has always appeared to me that there are three points to be considered, and maturely considered, before we can be prepared to vote for the resolution of the gentleman from Pennsylvania: First. Our ability to contend with Great Britain for the question in dispute: Secondly. The policy of such a contest: Thirdly. In case both these shall be settled affirmatively, the manner in which we can, with the greatest effect, react upon and annoy our adversary.

Now the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. CROWNINSHIELD) has settled at a single sweep, to use one of his favorite expressions, not only that we are capable of contending with Great Britain on the ocean, but that we are actually her superior. Whence does the gentleman deduce this inference? Because, truly, at that time when Great Britain was not mistress of the ocean, when a North was her prime minister, a Sandwich the first lord of her admiralty, when she was governed by a counting-house administration, privateers of this country trespassed on her commerce! So, too, did the cruisers of Dunkirk; at that day Suffrein held the mastery of the Indian seas. But what is the case now? Do gentlemen remember the capture of Cornwallis on land, because De Grasse maintained the dominion of the ocean? To my mind no position is more clear, than that if we go to war with Great Britain, Charleston and Boston, the Chesapeake and the Hudson, will be invested by British squadrons. Will you call on the Count de Grasse to relieve them, or shall we apply to Admiral Gravina, or Admiral Villeneuve to raise the blockade? But you have not only a prospect of gathering glory, and what seems to the gentleman from Massachusetts much dearer, profit, by privateering, but you will be able to make a conquest of Canada and Nova Scotia. Indeed! Then, sir, we shall catch a Tartar. I confess, however, I have no desire to see the Senators and Representatives of the Canadian French, or of the tories and refugees of Nova Scotia, sitting on this floor or that of the other House--to see them becoming members of the Union, and participating equally in our political rights. And on what other principle would the gentleman from Massachusetts be for incorporating those provinces with us? Or on what other principle could it be done under the constitution? If the gentleman has no other bounty to offer us for going to war, than the incorporation of Canada and Nova Scotia with the United States, I am for remaining at peace.

What is the question in dispute? The carrying trade. What part of it? The fair, the honest, and the useful trade that is engaged in carrying our own productions to foreign markets, and bringing back their productions in exchange? No, sir. It is that carrying trade which covers enemy’s property, and carries the coffee, the sugar, and other West India products, to the mother country. No, sir, if this great agricultural nation is to be governed by Salem and Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and Baltimore and Norfolk and Charleston, let gentlemen come out and say so; and let a committee of public safety be appointed from those towns to carry on the Government. I, for one, will not mortgage my property and my liberty, to carry on this trade. The nation said so seven years ago--I said so then, and I say so now. It is not for the honest carrying trade of America, but for this mushroom, this fungus of war--for a trade which, as soon as the nations of Europe are at peace, will no longer exist,--it is for this that the spirit of avaricious traffic would plunge us into war.

I am forcibly struck on this occasion by the recollection of a remark made by one of the ablest (if not the honestest) Ministers that England ever produced. I mean Sir Robert Walpole, who said that the country gentlemen (poor meek souls!) came up every year to be sheared--that they lay mute and patient whilst their fleeces were taking off--but that if he touched a single bristle of the commercial interest, the whole stye was in an uproar. It was indeed shearing the hog--“great cry and little wool.”

But we are asked, are we willing to bend the neck to England; to submit to her outrages? No, sir, I answer, that it will be time enough for us to vindicate the violation of our flag on the ocean, when they shall have told us what they have done in resentment of the violation of the actual territory of the United States by Spain--the true territory of the United States, not your new-fangled country over the Mississippi, but the good old United States--part of Georgia, of the old thirteen States--where citizens have been taken, not from our ships, but from our actual territory. When gentlemen have taken the padlock from our mouths, I shall be ready to tell them what I will do, relative to our dispute with Britain, on the law of nations, on contraband, and such stuff.

I have another objection to this course of proceeding. Great Britain, when she sees it, will say the American people have great cause of dissatisfaction with Spain. She will see by the documents furnished by the President, that Spain has outraged our Territory, pirated upon our commerce, and imprisoned our citizens; and she will inquire what we have done? It is true, she will receive no answer, but she must know what we have not done. She will see that we have not repelled these outrages, nor made any addition to our army and navy--nor even classed the militia. No, sir, not one of your militia generals in politics has marshalled a single brigade.

Although I have said it would be time enough to answer the question which gentlemen have put to me when they shall have answered mine, yet as I do not like long prorogations I will give them an answer now. I will never consent to go to war for that which I cannot protect. I deem it no sacrifice of dignity to say to the Leviathan of the deep--we are unable to contend with you in your own element, but if you come within our actual limits we will shed our last drop of blood in their defence. In such an event I would feel, not reason, and obey an impulse which never has, which never can deceive me.

France is at war with England--suppose her power on the continent of Europe no greater than it is on the ocean. How would she make her enemy feel it? There would be a perfect non-conductor between them. So with the United States and England--she scarcely presents to us a vulnerable point. Her commerce is now carried on for the most part in fleets--where in single ships they are stout and well armed--very different from the state of her trade during the American war, when her merchantmen became the prey of paltry privateers. Great Britain has been too long at war with the three most powerful maritime nations of Europe not to have learnt how to protect her trade. She can afford convoy to it all--she has eight hundred ships in commission, the navies of her enemies are annihilated. Thus this war has presented the new and curious political spectacle of a regular annual increase (and to an immense amount) of her imports and exports, and tonnage and revenue, and all the insignia of accumulating wealth, whilst in every former war, without exception, these have suffered a greater or less diminution. And wherefore? Because she has driven France, Spain, and Holland from the ocean. Their marine is no more. I verily believe that ten English ships-of-the-line would not decline a meeting with the combined fleets of those nations. I forewarn the gentleman from Massachusetts and his constituents of Salem, that all their golden hopes are vain. I forewarn them of the exposure of their trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope (or now doubling it) to capture and confiscation--of their unprotected seaport towns, exposed to contribution or bombardment. Are we to be legislated into war by a set of men, who in six weeks after its commencement may be compelled to take refuge with us up in the country? And for what? A mere fungus--a mushroom production of war in Europe, which will disappear with the first return of peace--an unfair trade. For is there a man so credulous as to believe that we possess a capital not only equal to what may be called our own proper trade, but large enough also to transmit to the respective parent states the vast and wealthy products of the French, Spanish and Dutch colonies? It is beyond the belief of any rational being. But this is not my only objection to entering upon this naval warfare; I am averse to a naval war with any nation whatever. I was opposed to the naval war of the last Administration, and I am as ready to oppose a naval war of the present Administration, should they meditate such a measure. What! shall this great mammoth of the American forest leave his native element and plunge into the water in a mad contest with the shark? Let him beware that his proboscis is not bitten off in the engagement. Let him stay on shore, and not be excited by the muscles and periwinkles on the strand, or political bears, in a boat to venture on the perils of the deep. Gentlemen say, will you not protect your violated rights? and I say, why take to water, where you can neither fight nor swim? Look at France--see her vessels stealing from port to port on her own coast--and remember that she is the first military power of the earth, and as a naval people second only to England. Take away the British navy, and France to-morrow is the tyrant of the ocean.

This brings me to the second point. How far is it politic in the United States to throw their weight into the scale of France at this moment, from whatever motive--to aid the views of her gigantic ambition--to make her mistress of the sea and land--to jeopardize the liberties of mankind? Sir, you may help to crush Great Britain, you may assist in breaking down her naval dominion, but you cannot succeed to it. The iron sceptre of the ocean will pass into his hands who wears the iron crown of the land. You may then expect a new code of maritime law. Where will you look for redress? I can tell the gentleman from Massachusetts that there is nothing in his rule of three that will save us, even although he should outdo himself, and exceed the financial ingenuity which he so memorably displayed on a recent occasion. No, sir, let the battle of Actium be once fought, and the whole line of seacoast will be at the mercy of the conqueror. The Atlantic, deep and wide as it is, will prove just as good a barrier against his ambition, if directed against you, as the Mediterranean to the power of the Cæsars. Do I mean (when I say so) to crouch to the invader? No! I will meet him at the water’s edge, and fight every inch of ground from thence to the mountains--from the mountains to the Mississippi. But after tamely submitting to an outrage on your domicil, will you bully and look big at an insult on your flag three thousand miles off?

But, sir, I have yet a more cogent reason against going to war, for the honor of the flag in the narrow seas, or any other maritime punctilio. It springs from my attachment to the Government under which I live. I declare, in the face of day, that this Government was not instituted for the purposes of offensive war. No! It was framed (to use its own language) “for the common defence and the general welfare,” which are inconsistent with offensive war.[35] I call that offensive war, which goes out of our jurisdiction and limits for the attainment or protection of objects not within those limits, and that jurisdiction. As in 1798 I was opposed to this species of warfare, because I believed it would raze the constitution to its very foundation--so, in 1806, I am opposed to it, and on the same grounds. No sooner do you put the constitution to this use--to a test which it is by no means calculated to endure--than its incompetency becomes manifest, apparent to all. I fear if you go into a foreign war, for a circuitous, unfair carrying trade, you will come out without your constitution. Have not you contractors enough yet in this House? Or, do you want to be overrun and devoured by commissaries, and all the vermin of contract? I fear, sir, that what are called “the energy men” will rise up again--men who will burn the parchment. We shall be told that our Government is too free; or, as they would say, weak and inefficient. Much virtue, sir, in terms! That we must give the President power to call forth the resources of the nation. That is, to filch the last shilling from our pockets--to drain the last drop of blood from our veins. I am against giving this power to any man, be he who he may. The American people must either withhold this power, or resign their liberties. There is no other alternative. Nothing but the most imperious necessity will justify such a grant. And is there a powerful enemy at our doors? You may begin with a First Consul. From that chrysalis state he soon becomes an Emperor. You have your choice. It depends upon your election whether you will be a free, happy, and united people at home, or the light of your Executive Majesty shall beam across the Atlantic in one general blaze of the public liberty.

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.