5708. NAVIGATION, Coasting and carrying trade.—
I like your convoy bill, because
although it does not assume the maintenance
of all our maritime rights, it assumes
as much as it is our interest to maintain.
Our coasting trade is the first and most
important branch, never to be yielded but
with our existence. Next to that is the carriage
of our own productions in our own
vessels, and bringing back the returns for our
own consumption; so far I would protect it
and force every part of the Union to join
in the protection at the point of the bayonet.
But though we have a right to the remaining
branch of carrying for other nations, its
advantages do not compensate its risks.
Your bill first rallies us to the ground the
Constitution ought to have taken, and to
which we ought to return without delay;
the moment is the most favorable possible,
because the Eastern States, by declaring
they will not protect that cabotage by war,
and forcing us to abandon it, have released us
from every future claim for its protection on
that part. Your bill is excellent in another
view: It presents still one other ground to
which we can retire before we resort to war;
it says to the belligerents, rather than go to
war, we will retire from the brokerage of
other nations, and will confine ourselves to the
carriage and exchange of our own productions;
but we will vindicate that in all its
rights—if you touch it, it is war.—
To Mr. Burwell. Washington ed. v, 505.
(M.
Feb. 1810)
