Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Macon) exclaimed the other day, in a strain of patriotic ardor, "What! shall not our laws be executed? Shall their authority be defied? I am for enforcing them at every hazard." I honor that gentleman's zeal: and I mean no deviation from that true respect I entertain for him, when I tell him, that in this instance "his zeal is not according to knowledge.' I ask this House, is there no control to its authority? is there no limit to the power of this national legislature? I hope I shall offend no man when I intimate that two limits exist,-nature and the constitution. Should this House undertake to declare that this atmosphere should no longer surround us, that water should cease to flow, that gravity should not hereafter operate, that the needle should not vibrate to the pole, I do suppose, Mr. Chairman,-Sir, I mean no disrespect to the authority of this House, I know the high notions .some gentlemen entertain on this subject,—I do suppose-Sir, I hope I shall not offend-I think I may venture to affirm, that, such a law to the contrary notwithstanding, the air would continue to circulate, the Mississippi, the Hudson, and the Potomac would hurl their floods to the ocean, heavy bodies continue to descend, and the mysterious magnet hold on its course to its celestial cynosure.

Just as utterly absurd and contrary to nature is it to attempt to prohibit the people of New England, for any considerable length of time, from the ocean. Commerce is not only associated with all the feelings, the habits, the interests and relations of that people, but the nature of our soil and of our coast, the state of our population and its mode of distribution over our territory, render it indispensable. We have five hundred miles of sea-coast; all furnished with harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, basins,—with every variety of invitation to the sea, with every species of facility to violate such laws as these. Our people are not scattered over an immense surface; at a solemn distance from each other, in lordly retirement, in the midst of extended plantations and intervening wastes. They are collected on the margin of the ocean, by the sides of rivers, at the heads of bays, looking into the water or on the surface of it for the incitement and the reward of their industry. Among a people thus situated, thus educated, thus numerous, laws prohibiting them from the exercise of their natural rights will have a binding effect not one moment longer than the public sentiment supports them.

I ask in what page of the constitution you find the power of laying an embargo? Directly given it is nowhere. You have it, then, by construction, or by precedent. By construction of the power to regulate. I lay out of the question the commonplace argument, that regulation cannot mean annihilation; and that what is annihilated cannot be regulated. I ask this question,-Can a power be ever cbtained by construction which had never been exercised at the time of the authority given,-the like of which had not only never been

seen, but the idea of which had never entered into human imagination, I will not say in this country, but in the world? Yet such is this power, which by construction you assume to exercise. Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse like this in a commercial nation. Did the people of the United States invest this House with a power of which at the time of investment that people had not and could not have had any idea? For even in works of fiction it had never existed..

But it has been asked in debate, "will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations?" An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea nymph. She was as free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle? Our fathers met her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her whilst she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty, a handcuffed liberty, a liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between four sides of a prison, and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster. Its parentage is all inland.

"The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Macon) exclaimed the other day, "Where is the spirit of '76?" Ay, sir; where is it? Would to Heaven that at our invocation it would condescend to alight on this floor. But let gentlemen remember, that the spirit of '76 was not a spirit of empty declamation, or of abstract propositions. It did not content itself with non-importation acts, or non-intercourse laws. It was a spirit of active preparation, of dignified energy. It studied both to know our rights and to devise the effectual means of maintaining them. In all the annals of '76, you will find no such degrading doctrine as that maintained in this report. It never presented to the people of the United States the alternative of war or a suspension of our rights, and recommend the latter rather than to incur risk of the former. What was the language of that period in one of the addresses of Congress to Great Britain? "You attempt to reduce us by the sword to base and abject submission. On the sword, therefore, we rely for protection." In that day there were no alternatives presented to dishearten,- —no abandonment of our rights under the pretence of maintaining them,-no gaining the battle by running away. In the whole history of that period there are no such terms as embargo,dignified retirement,-trying who can do each other the most harm. At that time we had a navy,—that name so odious to the influences of the present day. Yes, Sir, in 1776, though but in our infancy, we had a navy scouring our coasts, and defending our commerce, which was never for one moment wholly suspended. In 1776 we had an army also; and a glorious army it was! not composed of men halting from the stews, or swept from the jails, but of the best blood, the real yeo

[ocr errors]

manry of the country, noble cavaliers, men without fear, and without reproach. We had such an army in 1776, and Washington was at its head. We have an army in 1808, and a head to it.

I will not humiliate those who lead the fortunes of the nation at the present day by any comparison with the great men of that period. But recommend the advocates of the present system of public measures to study well the true spirit of 1776, before they venture to call it in aid of their purposes. It may bring in its train some recollections not suited to give ease or hope to their bosoms. I beg gentlemen who are so frequent in their recurrence to that period to remember, that among the causes which led to a separation from Great Britain the following are enumerated. Unnecessary restrictions upon trade; cutting off commercial intercourse between the colonies; embarrassing our fisheries; wantonly depriving our citizens of necessaries; invasion of private property by governmental edicts; the authority of the commander-inchief, and under him of the brigadier-general, being rendered supreme in the civil government; the commander-in-chief of the army made governor of a colony; citizens transferred from their native country for trial. Let the gentlemen beware how they appeal to the spirit of '76: lest it come with the aspect, not of a friend, but of a tormentor,lest they find a warning when they look for support, and instead of encouragement they are presented with an awful lesson.

Let me ask, Is embargo independence? Deceive not yourselves. It is palpable submission. Gentlemen exclaim, Great Britain "smites us on one cheek." And what does Administration? "It turns the other also." Gentlemen say, Great Britain is a robber, she "takes ou cloak." And what says Administration? "Let her take our coat also France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your cor merce, and you yield it entirely. Sir, this conduct may be the way: dignity and honor in another world, but it will never secure safety an independence in this.

At every corner of this great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority, wringing their hands and exclaiming, "What shall we do? Nothing but embargo will save us. Remove it, and what shall we do?" Sir, it is not for me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans of government. But to my eye the path of our duty is as distinct as the milky way,-all studded with living sapphires, glowing with cumulating light. It is the path of active preparation, of dignified energy. It is the path of 1776. It consists, not in abandoning our rights, but in supporting them, as they exist, and where they exist,-on the ocea as well as on the land. It consists in taking the nature of things as the measure of the rights of your citizens, not the orders and decrees of imperious foreigners. Give what protection you can. Take no counsel

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

of fear. Your strength will increase with the trial, and prove greater than you are now aware. But I shall be told, "This may lead to war. I ask, Are we now at peace?" Certainly not, unless retiring from insult be peace,-unless shrinking under the lash be peace. The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse. Abandonment of essential rights is worse.

Sir, I could not refrain from seizing the first opportunity of spreading before this House the sufferings and exigencies of New England under this embargo. Some gentlemen may deem it not strictly before us. It is my opinion it is necessarily. For, if the idea of the committee be correct, and embargo is resistance, then this resolution sanctions its continuance. If, on the contrary, as I contend, embargo is submission, then this resolution is a pledge of its repeal.

MARITIME PROTECTION.

JOSIAH QUINCY, JR.

Washington, January 25, 1812.

If this commerce were the mushroom growth of a night, if it had its vigor from the temporary excitement and the accumulated nutriment which warring elements in Europe had swept from the places of their natural deposit, then, indeed, there might be some excuse for a temporizing policy touching so transitory an interest. But commerce in the Eastern States is of no foreign growth, and of no adventitious seed. Its root is of a fibre which almost two centuries have nourished; and the perpetuity of its destiny is written in legible characters as well in the nature of the country as in the dispositions of its inhabitants. Indeed, sir, look along your whole coast, from Passamaquoddy to Capes Henry and Charles, and behold the deep and farwinding creeks and inlets, the noble basins, the projecting headlands, the majestic rivers, and those sounds and bays which are more like inland seas than like anything called by those names in other quarters of the globe. Can any man do this and not realize that the destiny of the people inhabiting such a country is essentially maritime? Can any man do this without being impressed by the conviction that, although the poor projects of politicians may embarrass, for a time, the dispositions growing out of the condition of such a country, yet that Nature will be too strong for cobweb regulation and will vindicate her rights with certain effect,-perhaps with awful perils? No nation ever did or ever ought to resist such allurements and invitations to a particular mode of industry.

The purposes of Providence relative to the destination of men are to be gathered from the circumstances in which his beneficence has placed them. And to refuse to make use of the means of prosperity which his goodness has put into our hands, what is it but spurning at his bounty, and rejecting the blessings which his infinite wisdom has designated for us by the very nature of his allotments? The employments of industry connected with navigation and commercial enterprise are precious to the people of that quarter of the country by ancient prejudice, not less than by recent profit. The occupation is rendered dear and venerable by all the cherished associations of our infancy, and all the sage and prudential maxims of our ancestors. And as to the lessons of encouragement derived from recent experience, what nation ever within a similar period received so many that were sweet and salutary? What nation in so short a time ever before ascended to such a height of commercial greatness?

It has been said by some philosophers of the other hemisphere that Nature in this New World had worked by a sublime scale; that our mountains and rivers and lakes were beyond all comparison greater than anything the Old World could boast; that she had here made nothing diminutive-except its animals. And ought we not to fear lest the bitterness of this sarcasm should be concentrated on our country by a course of policy wholly unworthy of the magnitude and nature of the interests committed to our guardianship? Have we not reason to fear that some future cynic, with an asperity which truth shall make piercing, will declare, that all things in these United States. are great-except its statesmen? and that we are pygmies to whom Providence has intrusted, for some inscrutable purpose, gigantic labors? Can we deny the justice of such severity of remark, if, instead of adopting a scale of thought and a standard of action proportionate to the greatness of our trust and the multiplied necessities of the people, we bring to our task the mere measures of professional industry, and mete out contributions for national safety by our fee-tables, our yard-sticks, and our gill-pots Can we refrain from subscribing to the truth of such censure, if we do not rise in some degree to the height of our obligations, and teach ourselves to conceive, and with the people to realize, the vastness of those relations which are daily springing among states which are not so much one empire as a congregation of empires?

While I am on this point, I cannot refrain from noticing a strange solecism which seems to prevail touching the term flag. It is talked about as though there was something mystical in its very nature,—as though a rag with certain stripes and stars on it tied to a stick, and called a flag, was a wizard wand, and entailed security on everything under it or within its sphere. There is nothing like all this in the nature of the thing. A flag is the evidence of power? A land flag is

« ÎnapoiContinuă »