Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 (4 of 16 vol.). United States. Congress

merchants would send their vessels to sea; those vessels would be captured by British cruisers; these captures would be resisted; such resistance would produce war, and that was what he both wished and expected. I agree perfectly with the gentleman, that this is the natural progress, and must be the ultimate effect of the measure; and I am also glad, that neither the honorable Senate nor the people of the United States can entertain any doubts upon the subject.

      I understood the gentleman also to say, that this was a result he had long expected. Now, sir, as there have been no recent decrees, or Orders in Council issued, if war has been long looked for, from those now in operation, I know not what excuse those who have the management of our concerns can offer to the people of the United States, for leaving the country in its present exposed, naked, and defenceless situation.

      What are our preparations for war? After being together four-fifths of the session, we have extorted a reluctant consent to fit out four frigates. We have also on the stocks, in the navy yard and elsewhere scattered along the coast, from the Mississippi to the Schoodick, one hundred and seventy gunboats, which, during the summer season, and under the influence of gentle western breezes, may, when in commission, make out to navigate some of our bays and rivers, not, however, for any effectual purposes of defence, for I most conscientiously believe, that three stout frigates would destroy the whole of them; and of the enormous expense at which this burlesque naval establishment is kept up, we have had a specimen the present session, by a bill exhibited to the Senate, of eight hundred dollars for medical attendance, on a single gunboat for a single month, at New Orleans. If other expenditures are to be made in this ratio, it requires but few powers of calculation to foretell that, if the gunboats can destroy nothing else, they would soon destroy the public Treasury.

      We have also heard of a project for raising fifty thousand volunteers, which has, I believe, been very properly stifled in its birth, and we have appropriated, during the present session, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards the erection, repairing, and completion of our fortifications. A sum about equal to the expenditure of the British Government for six weeks, or two months, on a single fortress in the Province of Canada, and which sum, with us, is to put into a state of defence, against the naval power of Great Britain, an exposed and accessible maritime frontier of two thousand miles in extent!

      In contemplating war, it is also proper to advert to the state of the Treasury. Under such an event, and with any serious preparation for war or actual prosecution of it, the present funds would soon be exhausted. How soon cannot be stated, because the amount of them cannot be accurately ascertained. A part, and a considerable part, of the money now on hand, does not belong to the public. It is the property of the merchants; it is deposited in the Treasury as in a bank, to be checked for, whenever that commerce, which Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, most emphatically says, our country will have, shall be again reopened.

      And thus situated, what are the projects offered for replenishing the public coffers in future? It is the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to develop the resources of the nation, and to point out new sources of supply, whenever the usual channels are impeded. He has designated three modes. The first, if executed, embraces, in my view, and I am sorry to say it, a marked violation of the public faith. It is the suggestion of stopping drawbacks on merchandise, which, in many instances, the merchants, from a reliance on the stability of your laws, and the integrity of the Government, have imported expressly for exportation, and not for domestic use or consumption in this country, and which exportation you have prevented them, alike contrary to their inclinations and their interests, from making for a longer period than ever was known or endured in any other nation.

      The second project is one which, in my opinion, would do little honor to the genius of any man. It is a sweeping project for doubling, at the moment, the duties on every description of imported merchandise, on which a duty is now payable. Without notice to the merchant, without inquiry, without discrimination, without distinction between the necessaries of the poor man and the luxuries of the rich one; between the indispensable raw materials of the manufacturer and the useless decorations of fashion. By which, bohea tea and Madeira wine, brown sugar and cosmetics, coaches and carpenters tools, are all, by a single stroke of the pen, raised in the same ratio; and a duty of 100 per cent. on the present rates, without favor or affection, equally recommended to be imposed on the whole of them.

      The third project is certainly not a novel one; it is simply that of shifting the burden off our own shoulders on to those of our successors: it is that of borrowing money on loans.

      I have been, sir, among those who have respected the intelligence and acuteness of the Secretary of the Treasury. I have thought the office very ably filled; nor has my estimation of his talents been diminished from the few personal conferences I have had with him since I have been in this city; but if his fame rested on no firmer a basis than the reports made to Congress the present session, in relation to enforcing the embargo laws, and to our fiscal concerns, then an infant's breath might easily burst the bubble. At any rate, it may very truly be said, that if such are our preparations for commencing, and our resources for continuing a war, they are those which will serve neither to inspirit ourselves, nor to frighten our enemies.

      If we are to have war, with whom is it to be prosecuted – not in terms I mean, but in fact? Certainly not with France. Her few possessions in the West Indies have probably, by this time, ceased to belong to her, and between her European territories and the United States a gulf intervenes, a power is interposed, which neither the Emperor of the West nor the King of the two Americas can either fathom or resist.

      It then appears, if we are to have war, it is to be a covert war with the two belligerents, but in reality an actual war with Great Britain alone, and not a war with both France and Great Britain, as the face of this bill seems to import.

      If this be the determination of our Government, and the war is to commence at a future day, and not instantly, what is the course which policy would dictate to this country to pursue? Certainly not a prohibition of the importation of her manufactures. A long period of years must elapse before we can furnish for ourselves many articles we receive from her even of the first necessity, or those which, from habit, have become such to us. We should, therefore, sedulously endeavor, not only to guard against exhausting our present stock, but to adopt every means in our power to replenish it.

      It would be expedient to throw wide open the entrance of our ports for importations, to overstock as much as possible the United States with British manufactures. This would procure for us a double advantage; it would promote our own accommodation, by giving us the means of commencing and prosecuting war with fewer privations, and it would powerfully tend to unite the interests of a certain class of the inhabitants of that country with our own – for, as the mass of importations from Great Britain are made on long credits, should a war ensue before such credits are cancelled, it is obvious that, until the conclusion of the war, those debts could not be collected, and this circumstance alone, to a certain extent, might operate as a preventive check to war, or, at any rate, would secure in the bosom of the British nation a party whose interests and feelings would be intimately connected with a speedy return of peace.

      By adopting a non-intercourse antecedent to a state of war, our own stock of supplies becomes exhausted, the British merchants have time and notice given them to collect, or alienate, by assignment, their debts in this country. A warning is given them to buckle on their armor; their good disposition towards us is not only changed, but embittered, and the very persons who, in the one case, might possibly prevent a war, or be instrumental in effecting the restoration of peace, would, in the other, probably be among the most willing to rush into the contest, from the impulse of temper, and from the conviction that their own circumstances would not be deteriorated by its consequences.

      A non-intercourse would also be attended with great hazard and disadvantage. It would be as well understood by others as by ourselves; it could alone be considered as the precursor of war; and the blow would be struck, not when we were prepared, but when our opponents were ready for the contest; and should this bill go into operation, it is very possible that during the ensuing summer, some of our cities may exhibit heaps of ruins and of ashes, before expresses could convene at the seat of Government even the heads of our departments.

      Another evil would arise, and that a permanent one; whether a non-intercourse eventuated in war or peace, it