2533. EMBARGO, Benefits of.—[further continued].
It alone could have saved
us from immediate war, and give time to call
home eighty millions of property, twenty or
thirty thousand seamen, and two thousand
vessels. These are now nearly at home, and
furnish a great capital, much of which will go
into manufactures and remain to man a fleet
of privateers, whenever our citizens shall prefer
war to a longer continuance of the Embargo.
Perhaps, however, the whole of the
ocean may be tired of the solitude it has made
on that element, and return to honest principles,
and that his brother robber on the land
may see that, as to us, the grapes are sour.—
To Governor John Langdon. Washington ed. viii, 132.
Ford ed., ix, 201.
(M.
Aug. 1808)
