their existence as a nation, that the terms were unequal and disadvantageous; and that a total rejection was preferable to the ratification of an instrument by which we made such mighty concessions. It was always my opinion, sir, that the statesman employed to negotiate on this occasion, was treated by public clamor with unmerited severity. He obtained a treaty from Great Britain, at that juncture, which, on the whole, answered our purposes exceedingly well, and was in reality more favorable to us than it probably would have been, had not the pressure of her affairs on the Continent of Europe induced her Ministers to be rather more conciliatory than usual. In the meantime the thirteen stripes were displayed with increasing frequency and numbers along the coasts of Europe. And such was the opinion of the three great maritime kingdoms, of their appearance, that, in 1794 and 1795, the cruisers of Spain, as well as of England and France, made captures of American vessels. They offered various pretexts for these acts. These chiefly referred to evasions of blockades, to the carrying of enemy's property, and to the concealing or covering it by fraudulent invoices and papers. On the part of France, however, our affairs soon wore a serious aspect. Uncivil dispositions were working up to hostility. The resident Minister of the United States was recalled, and another sent in his stead. At length, after successive and fruitless attempts to accommodate the differences, during which marked disrespect had been shown to our Government and its Commissioners, Congress formally dissolved the existing treaty between the two nations, and authorized American vessels to cruise against those of France. This brings me to the year 1798, during which, and the time we were then embroiled, the British Government granted, for a stipulated sum, the protection of convoy to the merchant vessels of the United States. This period of our commercial history, of which I am tracing this faint and imperfect outline, was distinguished by two remarkable events; one emanating from an act of our own Legislature, and the other from the misconduct of a petty despot of Barbary. And they are worthy of notice as tending to display the course of our trade and navigation, and of the proceedings of the Government in relation to them. The voyages to Africa for slaves had long disgraced while it enriched several of the European nations. The profits of a traffic in which rum and baubles were bartered a way for negroes, allured our countrymen to embark in it. But, for the purpose of stopping so disgraceful and unprincipled an employment, Congress enacted heavy penalties against it. And the commerce of a people, which, as far as its internal regulations extended had been universal, underwent a restriction which permanently prohibited the trade to Guinea in human beings. The rich cargoes conveyed under our flag through the Mediterranean sea had often tempted the cupidity of the Deys and Beys ruling the inhabitants of its southern shore. By annual stipends, the subsidies paid by the Government for the protection of our SENATE. foreign commerce in those distant regions, the persons, and the goods of our citizens were protected against those audacious pirates. One however, more unwise and unjust than the rest, by the exorbitancy of his demands, drew on himself the vengeance of our nation. He had captured American vessels and doomed their officers and crews to slavery. A war with Tripoli was the consequence, and, at the expense of a million of dollars from the Treasury, our naval heroes compelled those sons of rapine to respect the rights of our nation, and restore to its wonted freedom the commerce of its citizens. In 1801, there was an occurrence which, though it happened in Denmark, was of evil augury in the eyes of neutral nations. And as forming a link in the chain of events it ought to be mentioned here. A project had been formed among the northern Powers of Europe to revive the Armed Neutrality, which had been originally conceived at St. Petersburg in 1780. A British fleet was sent to the Baltic Sound to dissolve it. A destructive cannonade of Copenhagen, was the consequence of Danish adherence to their principles. Awed by superior force, those brave asserters of their rights sunk into acquiescence. But the citizens of our own or of any neutral nation who consider this transaction in its true bearings and tendencies, will find it big with mischiefs to the weaker Powers that take no part in the neighboring wars. Anarmed neutrality, or an armed commerce, may be expected alike to impel the stronger belligerent to repress it as a measure of precau tion, or to destroy it under a pretence of necessity. The peace of Amiens subsisted but a short year; for, in 1803, the recommencement of hostilities between France and Great Britain implicated in additional difficulties the foreign commerce of America. Our citizens persisted in their right to visit the ports of friendly nations. Our dispute with France had been terminated amicably by a treaty with the First Consul. The British Council, acting under a conviction that this trade was conducted in a manner that succored the enemy while it greatly incommoded themselves, determined that interference was necessary. Their cruisers seized American vessels trading with some of the French ports that were not blockaded, and their courts passed decrees of condemnation against ships with innocent cargoes on a return from ports to which they had carried contraband articles. Moralists have sometimes considered blindness to the future, a happy trait in the constitution of the human mind. They might with equal or with greater propriety have ascribed much of private and public felicity to a becoming degree of foresight. There was indeed little, very little of a prophetic spirit wanting to satisfy us that our halcyon days were passing rapidly away, and a season of privation and adversity would arise. The haughty nation that had terrified the Scandinavian thrones, next tormented the American coast. The Hudson, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake, had been annoyed by her squadrons of vigilance; ships both inward and outward bound had been captured and sent to Halifax. The trade SENATE. The Embargo. NOVEMBER, 1808. mostly composed with great ability; it seemed as if the merchants were in danger of total ruin. Their situation was depicted as being deplorable in the extreme. The interposition of their Government was asked in the most strenuous and pressing terms; and your table. Mr. President, was literally loaded with petitions. The chief cause of this distress was briefly this. These citizens of the United States were engaged dur of New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, and Baltimore was sorely distressed at the very mouths of their harbors. Passengers and seamen were arbitrarily impressed, as the milder phrase is, but really kidnapped or made prisoners. Coasting vessels carrying the domestic produce of our country from one port to another, and in no respect concerned in foreign commerce, were fired upon, and one of their people killed. The national territory was violated, the service of writs to arresting the war in Europe, in a commerce with enesome of these disorderly persons was resisted, the civil authority despised, and defied, and even the public vessels of the revenue assailed with shot. Conduct of this atrocious character was so imprudent and so reiterated, that the repeated appeals of the citizens to their Government, rendered it at length a case in which right blended with duty called upon Congress to act, and the result of these intolerable outrages was the statute for preserving peace in our own ports and harbors. In the ordinary intercourse of nations, such conduct would have amounted to war. It was indeed war; it was legitimate cause of war; nothing was required after such a severe blow given by them, but for us to return it, and the American would have entered the bloody amphitheatre to contend with the gladiators of Europe. But a pacific policy prevailed. The feeling of our people, smarting still under the wounds of the Revolution, and maintaining the doctrine that every citizen possesses, as an indefeasible inheritance, a portion of his country's sovereignty, was averse to contention in arms. On the part of France no reparation had been made for the heavy spoliations made upon our commerce by her cruisers, save the sum provided to be paid out of our own Treasury in satisfaction of them, by one of the conventions appurtenant to the treaty by which Louisiana was ceded to us. For the losses sustained by our merchants and underwriters, reparation had years before been sought for from Congress; but it had there been decided that losses in consequence of capture by a belligerent as well as by danger from the sea were to be borne by the concerned, and not to be considered as guarantied by the national Treasury. mies colonies' not open in time of peace; by this means, the produce of the French West Indies was conveyed under the neutral flag to the mother country. Great Britain opposed the direct commerce from the colony to France through the neutral bottom. The neutral then evaded the attempt against him by landing the colonial produce in his own country, and after having thus neutralized or naturalized it, exported it under drawback for Bordeaux or Marseilles; this proceeding was also opposed by the British, and much property was captured and condemned in executing their orders against it. Their writers justified their conduct by charging fraud upon the neutral flag, and declaring that under cover of them a "war in disguise" was carried on, while on our side the rights of neutrals were defended with great learning and ability in a most profound investigation of the subject. Connected with these events, progressing from bad to worse, are some proceedings of the Senate, which I deem it necessary here to state. This dignified body listened with peculiar attention to the complaints of the merchants. Their tale of sufferings excited a general sympathy. The most studious efforts were made for devising a plan of relief; at last it occurred that the peculiar organization of the Senate would enable it to pursue a course different from the ordinary routine of legislative business. In its executive capacity, the Senators were the Constitutional counsellors of the President as to treaties with foreign nations; and the Senate, influenced by a desire of removing the difficulties that were thickening around us, resolved to express their sense to the President upon that solemn occasion. After full I now come to the year 1806, an eventful year consideration they framed two strong resolutions, to the foreign commerce of our people. An ex- which are recorded in your journal of that sestravagant and armed trade had for a considerable sion; the one expressed indignant feelings at the time been carried on by some of our citizens with aggressions made by the belligerents, and the the emancipated or revolted blacks of Hayti. other requested to demand restitution and repaThe French Minister, conformably to the instruc- ration for the captures, condemnations, and imtions of his Government, remonstrated against pressments, they had committed. The members this traffic as ungracious and improper; and un-of the Senate were sent to communicate these der an impression that our citizens ought to be resolutions to the President. It was my lot, sir, restrained from intercourse with the negroes of to be employed in that service, and I well rememHispaniola, Congress passed an act forbidding that altogether. This was the second time that our Government circumscribed the commercial conduct of its citizens. It was also during this year that memorials were forwarded to the executive and legislative branches of our Government by the merchants of our principal seaports, stating the vexations of their foreign commerce to be intolerable, and calling in the most earnest terms for relief or redress. These addresses were ber the interview. What effect this conduct of the Senate produced in the mind of the Presi dent, it is impossible for me to say, but certain it is, that shortly after, he nominated Mr. Pinkney as Envoy Extraordinary to England, and the Senate gave their advice and consent; and this important step was taken to appease mercantile uneasiness, and to remove obstructions to the freedom of commerce. This same year was ushered in by a proclama NOVEMBER, 1808. The Embargo. SENATE. tion of General Ferrand, the French comman- month of November was distinguished by an order dant at St. Domingo, imposing vexations on the retaliating on France a decree passed by her sometrade of our citizens; and a partial non-import-time before, declaring the sale of ships by belligation law was enacted against Great Britain by erents to be illegal; and thus, by virtue of concurCongress about the middle of April. But these rent acts of these implacable enemies, the poor were not all the impediments which arose. Notices neutral found it impossible to purchase a ship were given to the American Minister in London either from a subject of Great Britain or of France. of several blockades. The chief of these was That season of gloom was famous, or rather inthat of the coast, from the Elbe to Brest inclu- famous, for another act, prohibiting wholly the sive, in May. And here, as it occurs to me, may commerce of neutrals with the enemies of Great I mention, the spurious blockade of Curraçoa, Britain, and for yet another, pregnant with the under which numerous captures were made. principles of lordly domination, on their part, and And lastly, to complete the catalogue of disas- of colonial vassalage on our, by which the cititers for 1806, and to close the woful climax, the zens of these independent and sovereign States French decree of Berlin came forth in Novem- are compelled to pay duties on their cargoes in ber, and, as if sporting with the interests and feel- British ports, and receive licenses under the auings of Americans, proclaimed Great Britain and thority of that Government, as a condition of her progeny of isles to be in a state of blockade. being permitted to trade to any part of Europe in possession of her enemies. Hopes had been entertained that such a violent and convulsed condition of society, would not be of long duration. Experience, however, soon proved that the infuriate rage of man was as yet unsatisfied, and had much greater lengths to go. For, early in the succeeding year (1807,) an order of the British Council was issued, by which the trade of neutrals, and of course of American citizens, was interdicted from the port of one belligerent to the port of another. And in the ensuing May, the rivers Elbe, Weser, and Ems, with the interjacent coasts, were declared by them to be in a state of blockade, and a similar declaration was made on their part to neutrals in regard to the straits of the Dardenelles, and the city of Smyrna. But these were but subordinate incidents in this commercial drama; the catastrophe of the tragedy was soon to be developed. On the 22d of June. by a formal order 'from a British admiral, our frigate Chesapeake, 'leaving her port for a distant service, was attacked by one of these vessels, which had been lying in our harbors under the indulgence of hospitality, was disabled from proceeding, had several of her crew killed, and four taken away." Immediately the President by proclamation interdicted our harbors and waters to all British armed vessels, and forbade intercourse with them. Under an uncertainty how far hostilities were intended, and the town of Norfolk being threatened with an immediate attack, a sufficient force was ordered for the protection of that place and such other preparations commenced and pursued as the prospect rendered proper. 6 C In furtherance of these schemes, a proclamation was published, holding all their absent seamen to their allegiance, recalling them from foreign services, and denouncing heavy penalties for disobedience. The operation of this upon the American merchant service would have been very sensibly felt. Many British born subjects were in the employ of our merchants, and that very Government which claimed as a British subject every American citizen who had been but two years a seamen in their service, refused to be bound by their own rule in relation to British subjects who had served an equal term on board the ships of the United States. But this was not all. The This outrageous edict on the part of Britain was succeeded by another on the side of France, equalling, or if possible, surpassing it in injustice. In December came forth the decree of Milan, enforcing the decree of Berlin against American trade; dooming to confiscation every vessel of the United States that had been boarded or even spoken to by a Briton, and encouraging, by the most unjustifiable lures, passengers and sailors to turn informers. The abominable mandate was quickly echoed in Spain, and sanctioned by the approbation of His Most Catholic Majesty. It has been executed with shocking atrocity. In addition to other calamities, the property of neutrals has been sequestered in France, and their ships burned by her cruisers on the ocean. Such, Mr. President, was the situation of the European world, when Congress deemed it necessary to declare an embargo on our own vessels. Denmark and Prussia, and Russia, and Portugal, had become associated or allied with France; and, with the exception of Sweden, the commerce of our citizens was prohibited, by the mutually vindictive and retaliating belligerents, from the White Sea to the Adriatic. American ships and cargoes were declared the prize and plunder of the contending Powers. The widely extended commerce of our people was to be crushed to atoms between the two mighty millstones, or prudently withdrawn from its dangerous exposure, and detained in safety at home. Policy and prudence dictated the latter measure. And as the ocean was become the scene of political storm and tempest, more dreadful than had ever agitated the physical elements, our citizens were admonished to partake of that security for their persons and property, in the peaceful havens of their country, which they sought in vain on the high seas and in European harbors. The regulations, so destructive to our commerce, were not enacted by us. They were imposed upon us by foreign tyrants. Congress had no volition, to vote upon the question. In the shipwreck of our trade, all that remained for us to do, was to save as much as we could from perishing, and as far as our efforts would go, to prevent a total loss. I touch, with a delicate hand, the mission of SENATE. The Embargo. NOVEMBER, 1808. Mr. Rose. The arrival of this Envoy Extraor- and Council maintained the right to tax and bind dinary from Britain was nearly of the same date the colonies. The people of the plantations and with an order of his Government, blockading Car-colonies, since risen to the dignity of States, dethagena, Cadiz, and St. Lucar, and the interme-nied the pernicious doctrine. The mother country diate ports of Spain, and thereby vexing the com- prepared to enforce it; and the colonies meditated merce of American citizens. The unsuccessful resistance. termination of his negotiation has been but a few months since followed by a refusal on the part of his Government to rescind its orders, that work so much oppression to our commerce, on condition of having the embargo suspended in respect to theirs. And the French Ministry has treated a similar friendly and pacific overture, from our Executive, with total disregard. In addition to all which we learn, from the highest source of intelligence, that the British naval commander at Barbadoes did, about the middle of October, declare the French leeward Caribbean islands to be in a state of strict blockade, and cautioning neutrals to govern themselves accordingly, under pain of capture and condemnation. Duties were laid upon paper, glass, and painter's colors, to be collected at the ports of entry in the colonies. Public indignation was never more vehement. It was communicated with electrical speed, from one extremity of the Empire to the other. It was resolved to defeat the stamp act by a refusal to buy its paper. All business was at a stand; memorials and remonstrances were forwarded to the King and to the Parliament. The discontent was so well grounded and so deeply fixed, that Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the colonies, trembled for the consequences. Resistance, in the form of insurrection or rebellion, seemed inevitable, and to prevent the horrors of a civil war, the odious statute was If it should appear to you, sir, that I have dwelt repealed. The freemen of New York were alwith too much minuteness on the series of events most frantic with joy on this occasion, and they that have progressed step by step to the present erected a superb statue to Chatham for his exercrisis, the only apology I have to offer is, that I tions against the continuance of the law. Their consider it necessary for the purpose of ascertain-countrymen. from Kennebec to Savannah, syming what the situation of the nation truly is. Un-pathized with them in their honest exertions. equal indeed is the contest between the weak and The duties on the other articles were also rethe strong. Where force is substituted for prin- | pealed; but the Parliament adhering to the right ciple, it is vain and useless to talk of rights. Two of taxation, and determining to test the princiforeign nations are contending with gigantic ef-ple, reserved a small impost on tea, to be collectforts for superiority. They have labored, with but ed in the colonies. All the resentment which too much success, to make the bystanders take the stamp act had excited, was revived on this sides in the contest. Our Government has hith- occasion; murmurs increased to uproar. To erto magnanimously maintained its neutrality. enforce the execution of this law, the officers of Yielding to the solicitations of neither, it was de- the British navy were commissionsd to act also sirous of doing impartial justice to the two. But as officers of the revenue. To manifest their opthis fair and equal demeanor would not satisfy position the people refused to consume the tea. them. The tempter not unfrequently practises They carried their aversion so far that the tickupon innocence the arts of circumvention; and ets of the State lottery, a fourth part of which exalted virtue gives to its possesser no indemnity had usually been purchased in the colonies, reagainst malice. The uprightness of our public mained unsold. They refused to import British conduct was pleasing neither to Albion nor to merchandise. They established domestic manuGaul. And as we had refused to become the ally factures. They destroyed the obnoxious drug on of either, we have to a certain degree suffered the board the vessels which brought it. They dehostility of both. The ancient and venerable code fended their privilege against the naval and miliprescribing law to civilized communities. is abro-tary force sent to subdue them. In short, they gated. New and capricious inventions, calculated to suit the clamor of a party, or the spite of a foe, are substituted in their stead. The freedom of the ocean is taken away. This highway of nations is infested with freebooters and pirates; and the more powerful legislates for the rest, in all cases whatever. Towards ourselves the old colonial principle is revived. Americans may navigate the seas indeed, but on condition of paying duties to Britain, or taking from her licenses to trade, and observing such further directions as it shall please her to prescribe. Are the American people prepared to submit to this? Having examined in my cursory manner the modern and I may say the present state of our affairs, I shall next take a hasty retrospect of this American people, while yet related to Britain as colonists, and before the idea of a separation had entered into the boldest head. The Parliament defended their holy cause: they expelled the enemy from their shores, and finally they achieved the independence of their country. If, in the year 1768, our predecessors could declare a nonimportation agreement, rather than submit to foreign taxation, what ought the present race of Americans to do in 1808, when menaced with similar exactions from abroad? That the present case is stronger than that which preceded and induced the Revolution, may be inferred from several considerations: The American Governments were at that time dependent colonies; they are now independent States. The British Parliament had at least the color of right to levy money upon them; they have now no legal pretext whatever. It was then alleged that the money raised on the colo nies would be employed in their own protection and defence; but now there is not even a pre NOVEMBER, 1808. The Embargo. SENATE. tence of the kind: then the colonies looked to arrested on their voyage, and compelled, as a the King of that country as their proper sover-condition of proceeding, to pay an impost for the eign, and the source of all honor and power; now he is an alien to them, and the allegiance that once connected the prince and his subjects has been absolved by his own act. And yet money is demanded by that monarch, from this very people, for the privilege of navigating the ocean, and of carrying her merchandise to the Continent of Europe! cargo, or in other words to purchase a license to enable them to go to their place of destination, whether outward or homeward bound. What other expedients those political economists may have in reserve for raising further sums of money on our trade, I am not Edipus enough to unriddle. As far, however, as I can comprehend the case before me, it is marked with stronger features than those which characterized the dawning Revolution. I cannot suppose that any luxury has corrupted, during the short period of their existence, the spirit and temper of the American people. The old Whig temperament still survives unchanged, unadulterated. And he who has but a single drop of whiggish blood in his veins, will ever be ready to assert the good old principles, and maintain them inviolate. If I am deceived in this, I should not err materially in expressing my doubts whether the acquisition of independence is to be considered as a blessing. Upon principle, therefore, the Revolutionary patriots have set us a noble precedent. They carried their self-denial to an absolute privation of intercourse. Is there firmness enough at the present crisis to carry such a law into operation? I know that, at home and abroad, the most subtle measures are adopted to thwart us. For example: Our non-importation law, in forbidding Irish linens, was calculated to encourage the introduction of them from the Netherlands and Silesia. But the British Ministry frame their orders to prohibit this, unless we pay duties to them, and thus purchase the privilege. Our embargo law rendered it unlawful for the collectors to give clearances to American vessels; yet, to defeat this regulation, the British Governors instantly open the West India ports to all manner of persons that will run away without them. While our gunboats and cutters are watching the harbors and sounds of the Atlantic, a strange inversion of business ensues, and by a retrograde motion of all the interior machinery of the country, potash and lumber are launched upon the lakes, and Champlain and Ontario feel the bustle of illicit trade; and strange to tell, under the embargo system, the southern atmosphere has become so subject to gales and tempests from the north, that our poor coasters, who love to hug their native shores, are by distress of weather often driven to Cuba and Jamai a, and there forced (dire necessity!) to sell their cargoes to repair the damage they have sustained, and refit for a return to that land which they are longing and sickening to see. Did the people of the United States authorize their public agents to consent to this? No. Have the President and Senate conceded the point by virtue of the treaty-making power? No. Are the American people represented in the Parliament that authorized these arbitrary measures? They are not. Do they allow that they ought to be taxed where they are not represented? They do not. Is this highminded nation prepared, at the age of thirty-five years, to surrender its independence by submitting to domination at which the infant colonies revolted? I cannot believe it. Will they consent to pay duties on their exports, when required by a foreign Government, while their own Constitution expressly with holds such a power from Congress? I think not, by no means. But I shall be told that this is an external regulation, and has no possible connexion with our internal and domestic concerns. Why really, if this is the fact, I cannot but admire the dullness of British statesmen forty years ago. The simpletons of that day conceived it necessary to collect the amount of duties in the colonial ports where the goods were entered for consumption. The experiment cost them an empire, but it taught them an important lesson. They learned from it a more easy and effectual mode of taxation: This was to charge a duty on their own exports, and collect the money in their cities at home, and by the hands of their officers there. They have successfully followed this lucrative business over since the expedient occurred to them. Such has been the avidity of the Americans to consume British manufactures, that they have always contributed largely to the ways and means of that Government. It has been calculated upon as a sure and efficient fund. One may | almost credit the declarations of certain British enthusiasts, who declare the loss of the colonies to have been a blessing, inasmuch as they were formerly very expensive, and paid no taxes, and at present contribute large sums of money, and are not chargeable at all. And with this tax, in addition to light money, quarantine fees, convoy duty, port charges, toppage, keelage, and various other things that have not yet received names in the commercial nomenclature of America, has If I have not erred in my reasoning, the embarour commerce with Great Britain been constant-go was correct in its principle, and would also be ly burdened. As, however, these were in reality correct in its continuance under the increasing regulations of a domestic and municipal nature, aggressions of the belligerent nations. But it is a compliance with them involved no dishonor. contended by the honorable mover (Mr. HILLIf our people voluntarily entered their ports, they HOUSE) of the resolution, that expediency ought were bound to obey their laws. But on the late to govern us on this occasion; and thus I supoccasion this arrogant Power has gone a greater pose the exception will be as broad as the rule. length. American citizens navigating the ocean, Let us examine the arguments in favor of this and lawfully pursuing their own business, are expediency. |