University of Virginia Library

JOHN RANDOLPH ON FOREIGN IMPORTATIONS.

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 upon entering on this subject
we go into it manacled, handcuffed, and tongue-tied. Gentlemen
know that our lips are sealed in 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 us 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 avv 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 12th 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 anything like serious refutation. The proper

arguments for such statesmen are a strait 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 gentlemen from
Pennsylvania. First, our ability to contend with Great Britain
for the question in dispute; second, the policy of such
a contest; and third, 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
and a Sandwich the first lord of her admiralty; when
she was governed by a counting-house administration, privateers
of this counttry trespassed on her commerce. So too
did the cruisers of Dunkirk. At that day Sufferin 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, to 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 the 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 production 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 countrty.

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 laid 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 tell gentlemen what we will do
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 newfangled
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 proceedings —

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
our 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 defense. 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 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
a war by a set of men who in six weeks after its commencement
may be compelled to take refuge with us 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 truce. For is there a man so credulous
as to believe that we possess a capital not only equal to what
my 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?
'Tis 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 mussels 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 swin? 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 domicile, 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 principles of 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 defense and the
general welfare, which are inconsistent with offensive war.

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 the very foundation,
so in 1806 am I 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
to such purposes becomes manifest and 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 you not contractors enough 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 never will go to war but in self-defense. 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 logbook
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." [1] 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 produce 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 foreign minister whatever—foreign
or, I presume, domestic. On this head 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 an
open declared cabinet, but 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 was 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 beaven in North America. Yes, sir, our
people have a better occupation—a safe, profitable, honorable
employment.

Whilst 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 public 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 dread 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, 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 forests 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 proved 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 indication of 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, and 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
but the advertisements of patent medicines. Here you
have the "Worm-destroying Losenges," 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 a physic, the doctor is oft-times the most dangerous
disease—and this I take to be our case at present.

But, sir, why do you 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 apply your remedy. When the nation
anxiously demands the result of your deliberations, you
hang your heads 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 jackal, do you presume to bully the British lion?

But here it comes out. Britian is your rival in trade, and
governed, as you are, by counting-house politicians: you
would sacrifice the paramount interests of your country to
wound that rival. For Spain and France you are carriers—
and from 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; 'tis a trade carried on, the Lord knows where o
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 'tis 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,
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 which 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 dispatches 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 everything. Let
the executive come forward to the legislature; let us see
whilst 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 this
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, to 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), in 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 ursupation 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, 'tis only necessary
to watch their premises, where you will often find the
point at issue totally surrendered, as in this case it is. Again
is the "mare liberum" anywhere 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 affect a
change of property? And when those duties are drawn
back, and the sugars and coffees re-exported, are they not, as
enemy's property, liable to seizure upon the principles of
the "examination of the British doctrine," etc. 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 notes if they please; but I will never,
from any motives short of self-defence, enter upon war. I
will never be instrumental to the ambitious schemes of Bonaparte,
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 Britian can never again see the
year 1760. Her Continental influence is gone forever. 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 of 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 is the situation of England that invites to
war with her? 'Tis true she does not deal so largely in perfectibility,
but she supplies you with a much more useful
commodity—with coarse woolens. With less professions 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 Bonaparte; I practice 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, 'tis 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 contributions
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 Britian.

"Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat." [2] 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 jeapordize the constitution in support of commercial
monopoly, in the vain hope of satisfying the insatiable greediness
of trade? Administer the constitution upon 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, 'tis for a circuitous traffic
—an ignis fatuus.

And against whom? A nation from whom you have
anything 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 everything 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 Britian? 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 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 won't 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 practice 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 Britian 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
do not put this into 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 whilst 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 they 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? will you 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 Britian 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, 'tis 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 Britian will not abandon to Russia
you expect her to yield to you. Russia indisputably the
second power of continental Europe, with half a million
of hardy troops, with sixty sail of the line, thirty millions
of subjects, 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—her only efficient ally. What
this formidable power cannot obtain with fleets and armies
you will command by writ—with pot-hooks 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 forever.

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—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.

There are now two great commercial nations. Great Britain
is one—we are the other. When you consider the many
points of contact between your interests, you may be surprised
that there has been so little collision. Sir, to the other
belligerent nations of Europe your navigation is a convenience,
I might say a necessity. If you do not carry for them
they must starve, at least for the luxuries of life, which
custom has rendered almost indispensable. And if you cannot
act with some degree of spirit towards those who are
dependent upon you as carriers, do you reckon to browbeat
a jealous rival who, the moment she lets slip the dogs
of war, sweeps you, at a blow, from the ocean? And cui
bono? for whose benefit?—The planter? Nothing like it.
The fair, honest, real American merchant? No, sir—for
renegadoes; to-day America—to-morrow, Danes. Go to war
when you will, the property now covered by the American
will then pass under the Danish or some other neutral flag.
Gentlemen say that one English ship is worth three of ours:

we shall therefore have the advantage in privateering. Did
they ever know a nation to get rich by privateering?

This is stuff for the nursery. Remember that your products
are bulky—as has been stated—that they require a
vast tonnage. Take these carriers out of the market—
what is the result? The manufactures of England, which
(to use a finishing touch of the gentleman's rhetoric) have
received the finishing stroke of art, lie in a small comparative
compass. The neutral trade can carry them. Your produce
rots in the warehouse—you go to Statia or St. Thomas's,
and get a striped blanket for a joe, if you can raise one—
double freight, charges, and commissions. Who receives
the profit?—The carrier. Who pays it?—The consumer.

All your produce that finds its way to England must bear
the same accumulated charges, with this difference: that
there the burden falls on the home price. I appeal to the
experience of the last war, which has been so often cited.
What, then, was the price of produce and of broadcloth?

But you are told England will not make war—she has
her hands full. Holland calculated in the same way in
1781. How did it turn out? You stand now in the place of
Holland, then—without her navy, unaided by the preponderating
fleets of France and Spain, to say nothing of the Baltic
powers. Do you want to take up the cudgels where these
great maritime powers have been forced to drop them? to
meet Great Britain on the ocean and drive her off its face?
If you are so far gone as this, every capital measure of
your policy hitherto has been wrong. You should have nurtured
the old and devised new systems of taxation—have
cherished your navy. Begin this business when you may,

land taxes, stamp acts, window taxes, hearth money, excise,
in all its modifications of vexation and oppression, must precede
or follow after.

But, sir, as French is the fashion of the day, I may be
asked for my projet. I can readily tell gentlemen what I
will not do. I will not propitiate any foreign nation with
money. I will not launch into a naval war with Great Britain,
although I am ready to meet her at the Cow-pens or
Bunker's Hill. And for this plain reason.

We are a great land animal, and our business is on shore.
I will send her no money, sir, on any pretext whatsoever,
much less on pretence of buying Labrador or Botany Bay,
when my real object was to secure limits which she formally
acknowledged at the peace of 1783. I go further—I would
(if anything) have laid an embargo. This would have got
our own property home and our adversary's into our power.
If there is any wisdom left among us the first step toward
hostility will always be an embargo. In six months all your
mercantile megrims would vanish. As to us, although it
would cut deep, we can stand it. Without such a precaution,
go to war when you will, you go to the wall. As to debts,
strike the balance to-morrow, and England is, I believe, in
our debt.

I hope, sir, to be excused for proceeding in this desultory
course. I flatter myself I shall not have occasion again to
trouble you—I know not that I shall be able—certainly
not willing, unless provoked in self-defence. I ask your
attention to the character of the inhabitants of that southern
country on whom gentlemen rely for the support of their
measure. Who and what are they? A simple agricultural

people, accustomed to travel in peace to market with the
produce of their labor. Who takes it from us?

Another people devoted to manufactures—our sole source
of supply. I have seen some stuff in the newspapers about
manufactures in Saxony, and about a man who is no longer
the chief of a dominant faction. The greatest man whom
I ever knew—the immortal author of the letters of Curtius
—has remarked the proneness of cunning people to wrap up
and disguise, in well-selected phrases, doctrines too deformed
and detestable to bear exposure in naked words; by a
judicious choice of epithets to draw the attention from the
lurking principle beneath and perpetuate delusion. But a
little while ago, and any man might be proud to be considered
as the head of the republican party. Now, it seems,
'tis reproachful to be deemed the chief of a dominant faction.

Mark the magic words! Head, chief. Republican party,
dominant faction. But as to these Saxon manufactures.
What became of their Dresden china? Why, the Prussian
bayonets have broken all the pots, and you are content with
Worcestershire or Saffordshire ware. There are some
other fine manufactures on the Continent, but no supply,
except, perhaps, of linens, the article we can best dispense
with. A few individuals, sir, may have a coat of Louviers
cloth, or a service of Sèvres china; but there is too little,
and that little too dear, to furnish the nation. You must depend
on the fur-trade in earnest, and wear buffalo hides and
bear skins.

Can any man who understands Europe pretend to say that
a particular foreign policy is now right because it would

have been expedient twenty or even ten years ago, without
abandoning all regard for common sense? Sir, it is the
statesman's province to be guided by circumstances, to anticipate,
to foresee them, to give them a course and a direction,
to mold them to his purpose.

It is the business of a counting house clerk to peer into
the day-book and ledger, to see no further than the spectacles
on his nose, to feel not beyond the pen behind his ear, to
chatter in coffee-houses, and be the oracle of clubs. From
1783 to 1793, and even later (I don't stickle for dates),
France had a formidable marine—so had Holland—so had
Spain. The two first possessed thriving manufactures and
a flourishing commerce. Great Britain, tremblingly alive to
her manufacturing interests and carrying trade, would have
felt to the heart any measure calculated to favor her rivals
in these pursuits; she would have yielded then to her fears
and her jealousy alone.

What is the case now? She lays an extra duty on her
manufactures, and there ends the question. If Georgia shall
(from whatever cause) so completely monopolize the culture
of cotton as to be able to lay an export duty of three
per cent upon it, besides taxing its cultivators in every other
shape that human or infernal ingenuity can devise, is Pennsylvania
likely to rival her or take away the trade?

But, sir, it seems that we who are opposed to this resolution
are men of no nerves—who trembled in the day of the
British treaty—cowards (I presume) in the reign of terror!
Is this true? Hunt up the journals; let our actions tell.
We pursue our unshaken course. We care not for the nations
of Europe, but make foreign relations bend to our political

principles and subserve our country's interest. We have
no wish to see another Actium, or Pharsalia, or the lieutenants
of a modern Alexander playing at piquet or all-fours
for the empire of the world. 'Tis poor comfort to us to be
told that France has too decided a taste for luxurious things
to meddle with us; that Egypt is her object, or the coast of
Barbary, and at the worst we shall be the last devoured.

We are enamored with neither nation—we would play
their own game upon them, use them for our interest and
convenience. But with all my abhorrence of the British
government I should not hesitate between Westminster Hall
and a Middlesex jury on the one hand, and the wood of
Vincennes and a file of grenadiers, on the other. That jury
trial which walked with Horne Tooke and Hardy through
the flames of ministerial persecutions is, I confess, more to
my taste than the trial of the Duke d'Enghien.

Mr. Chairman, I am sensible of having detained the committee
longer than I thought—certainly much longer than I
intended. I am equally sensible of their politeness, and not
less so, sir, of your patient attention. It is your own indulgence,
sir, badly requited indeed, to which you owe this persecution.
I might offer another apology for these undigested,
desultory remarks; my never having seen the treasury documents.
Until I came into the House this morning I have
been stretched on a sick bed.

But when I behold the affairs of this nation, instead of
being where I hoped, and the people believed they were, in
the hands of responsible men, committed to Tom, Dick, and
Harry—to the refuse of the retail trade of politics—I do
feel, I cannot help feeling, the most deep and serious concern.

If the executive government would step forward and
say, "Such is our plan, such is our opinion, and such are our
reasons in support of it," I would meet it fairly, would openly
oppose or pledge myself to support it. But without compass
or polar star I will not launch into an ocean of unexplored
measures which stand condemned by all the information
to which I have access. The constitution of the United
States declares it to be the province and duty of the President
"to give to Congress, from time to time, information
of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration
such measures as he shall judge expedient and necessary."
Has he done it? I know, sir, that we may say,
and do say, that we are independent (would it were true);
as free to give a direction to the executive as to receive it
from him. But do what you will, foreign relations—every
measure short of war, and even the course of hostilities—
depend upon him. He stands at the helm and must guide
the vessel of state.

I think our citizens just as well entitled to know what has
passed as the Marquis Yrujo, who has bearded your President
to his face, insulted your government within its own
peculiar jurisdiction, and outraged all decency. Do you
mistake this diplomatic puppet for an automaton? He has
orders for all he does. Take his instructions from his pocket
to-morrow, they are signed "Charles Maurice Talleyrand."

Let the nation know what they have to depend upon. Be
true to them, and trust me, they will prove true to themselves
and to you. The people are honest; now at home at
their plows, not dreaming of what you are about. But the
spirit of inquiry that has too long slept will be, must be,
awakened. Let them begin to think; not to say such things
are proper because they have been done, but, what has been
done? and wherefore?—and all will be right.