committee of the British House of Commons on the West India islands, in which this measure is recommended, and in which it is stated that His Britannic Majesty's West India subjects ought to receive further aid by placing these islands in a state of blockade? I can see in this measure nothing but a continuation of the system recommended last Winter in this report, and published-for the information of the United States, I suppose. If the embargo should be repealed, and our vessels suffered to go out in the face of the present Orders in Council and blockading decrees and proclamations, Mr. C. said, they would but expose us to new insults and aggressions. It was in vain to talk about the magnanimity of nations. It was not that magnanimity which induced nations as well as men to act honestly; and that was the best kind of magnanimity. The very magnanimity which had induced them to distress our commerce, would equally induce them to cut off the pitiful portion they had left to us. In a general point of view. there was now no lawful commerce. No vessel could sail from the United States without being liable to condemnation in Britain or France. If they sailed to France, Mr. C. said, they were carried into Britain; if they sailed to Britain, they were carried into France. Now, he asked, whether men who had any regard to national honor would consent to navigate the ocean on terms so disgraceful? We must be cool calculators, indeed, if we could submit to disgrace like this! The last reason offered by the supporters of the present resolution, Mr. C. said, may properly be said to be an argument in terrorem. The gentleman from Massachusetts says, by way of abstract proposition, that a perseverance in a measure opposed to the feelings and interests of the people may lead to opposition and insurrection; but the gentleman from Connecticut uses the same expressions as applicable to the embargo. It may be a forcible argument with some gentlemen, and most likely may have had its effect on those who intended it to produce an effect on others. But I trust that this House and this nation are not to be addressed in this way. Our understandings may be convinced by reason, but an address to our fears ought to be treated with contempt. If I were capable of being actuated by motives of fear, I should be unworthy of the seat which I hold on this floor. If the nation be satisfied that any course is proper, it would be base and degrading to be driven from it by the discordant murmurs of a minority. We are cautioned to beware how we execute a measure with which the feelings of the people are at war. I should be the last to persist in a measure which injuriously affected the interest of the United States; but no man feels more imperiously the duty of persevering in a course which is right, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of a few; and though I may regret and respect the feelings of these few, I will persist in the course which I believe to be right, at the expense even of the Government itself. Mr. MITCHILL said he was not prepared to vote SENATE. on the question of repealing the embargo laws, in the precise form in which it had been brought before the Senate. There was as yet a want of information; for certain additional documents, expected from the Executive, had not yet been communicated, and the select committee to which the part of the Message concerning the foreign relations of the country was lately referred, had not brought forward a report. He would have been better pleased if the proposition had been so framed as to have expressed indignation at the injuries our Government had received from foreign nations. Then he would cheerfully have given it his concurrence. But now, when those who are willing to do something, though not exactly what the motion proposes, are made to vote directly against a removal of the existing restrictions upon our commerce, their situation is rather unpleasant; indeed, it is unfair, inasmuch as they must either give their assent to a measure, to the time and manner of which they may be averse, or they must vote negatively in a case which, but for some incidental or formal matter, would have met their hearty approbation. He could, therefore, have wished that the question had been presented to the House in such terms as to afford an opportunity of expressing their sense of the wrongs our nation had endured from foreign Sovereigns, and of the restrictions laid upon American commerce by their unjust regulations, as well as on the further restrictions that, under the pressure of events, it had been thought necessary for our own Legislature to impose. But, although this course had not been taken, he should avail himself of the present occasion to offer to the Senate such sentiments as had arisen in his mind on the subject. In doing this, he should endeavor to take a commercial view of our situation; and, although he felt no small discouragement, from inability to arrange, in a methodical way, the proper topics for a speech, yet he found it his duty to offer something like a survey, however partial or detached, of the mercantile condition of the United States. For this purpose, he should give a sketch of the progress of our trade and navigation from the recognition of our independence in 1783. Immediately after the severing of their empire in America from the British Crown, difficulties arose on the mode of conducting commercial intercourse between this country and Great Britain. The Parliament immediately took the matter into consideration, and provided by law for a commercial intercourse with the new States. The details of this arrangement were vested in the King and Council, and to this first statute of the British, on the manner of conducting American trade, may be traced the origin of the delegated legislative power, with which that body of men have, in subsequent years, assailed neutral rights. Thus authorized by Parliament to regulate commerce, they have prescribed, enforced, relaxed, or rescinded their orders, according to their pleasure, or the ever-varying course of events, and thereby been enabled, in a summary way, to meet the exigencies of the times. About this time may be traced the commencement of that wonderful spirit of adventure which so distinguishes our people. We find some of them doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and displaying, for the first time, the flag of their nation to the Chinese at Canton, while others found their way round Cape Horn, and opened a traffic with the nations of the Northwest coast of America. And the joy which was excited on this side of the Atlantic, by the success and the profits of these voyages, was attended by a jealousy on the NOVEMBER, 1808. to assume an entire and undivided character in relation to foreign Powers. The navigating spirit of our countrymen having called the attention of the world to the Northwest coast of America, we find that, in 1790, Great Britain and Spain were preparing to engage in a war, concerning the possession of a region, which, in truth, belonged to neither, but which had been purchased of the natives some years before, and possessed in full right and property by citizens of Massachusetts. In 1793, France, hav other, that the monopoly of the East India Com-ing undergone its republican metamorphosis, depany would be invaded by these daring competi-clared in due form the same commercial privitors. The exertions of this class of our country- leges to this as to other nations. men have been such, that a small firm in partnership, or even the capital of an individual American merchant, has repeatedly provided the outfit, that, forty years ago, required the patronage of an European Government. Madagascar, the Sand wich, and the Fejee Islands, have been visited, and served but as resting places for our mariners in their circumnavigation of the globe. Difficulties having been found to increase between the American States and the British Islands, in respect to their commerce, it was found expedient on our part to send them a Minister Plenipotentiary. And, accordingly, in 1785, Mr. Adams went to London in that capacity. As an evidence of the temper both of England and France, at that period of our history, ought to be mentioned the attempts then made to seduce the whalemen from Nantucket. So successful for a while were these wily efforts, that the sandy but industrious island, whence its inhabitants migrated to Liverpool and to Dunkirk, suffered no inconsiderable shock by the migration of many of its most active citizens, and a removal of much of its shipping and stock. It was easy to discern that the desire of the two great commercial nations to increase their respective supplies of spermaceti, bone, and oil, was gratified by depriving our country of the most skilful and daring of its seamen. While the precarious Orders in Council thus governed the trade of our people to Great Britain, there existed a source of difficulty within the American States themselves, which proceeded from their political condition. A cluster of inde This, if I am not mistaken, said Mr. M., is the point of time when the commercial enterprise of our countrymen was considered, by the belligerent Powers of Europe, as worthy of special attention. And here is the commencement of these efforts to drive a lucrative trade on the one side, and of those exertions to curtail it on the other, which have led us, step by step, to our present awful situation. Repeated disasters and defeats had weakened the naval armament of France. She was unable to maintain her dominion on the ocean, or to give adequate protection to her external commerce. The business which had heretofore been carried on by her own merchant ships was now transferred to neutrals. And of these, the Americans, as the most enterprising, and contiguous to her West India colonies, acquired the principal part of it. Great Britain saw with displeasure the relief thus afforded to her enemy. She endeavored to prevent this interference of a neutral. And, that very year, ordered her cruisers to stop vessels of neutrals going to France and her dominions. The vast diffusion of our commerce, already spread over the greater part of the maritime world, was now very ably portrayed, and presented to the inspection of a prosperous and thrifty people by the American Secretary of State. The intercourse with France, still alluring neutrals by the prospect of great profits, our people crowded their ports with vessels and cargoes. The British persisted in their interruptions of this trade, and proceeded to make seizures, on the allegation that those ships were freighted with French property. pendent governments, loosely adhering by the With the British nation, possessing a commerce original articles of compact, framed during the of the greatest extent and a navy capable of proRevolution, and under the specious appearance of tecting her trade and settlements abroad, it was political unity, assuming the character of thir- a matter of the most ardent desire that our Gov teen distinct sovereignties, begat a variety of un-ernment should have a Treaty of Amity and precedented occurrences. Attempts to strengthen Commerce. The uneasiness of the people and NOVEMBER, 1808. this confederation, by granting the duties on imports to Congress for the purpose of paying the debts and supporting the credit of the nation, were ineffectual. And the refusal of New York, in 1787, to surrender its rich and increasing impost, may be considered as having left the Union to expire for want of support. Under the new Constitution, which was framed that very year, provision was expressly made for vesting in Congress the authority to regulate commerce. We were merely enabled to remedy many of the defects inherent in our former system: and particularly the discontents in the great cities were so serious, that it was judged necessary to send an Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of St. James. And, with the hope that the fermentation would be delayed by a suitable negotiation, Mr. Jay was despatched on a special mission. He succeeded in forming orming a treaty. When, however, the President submitted it to the Senate, and its contents were made known to the nation, the dissatisfaction seemed to have been rather aggravated than assuaged. It was contended on the part of a people who could but count, ten years since, the date of The Embargo. SENATE. their existence as a nation, that the terms were foreign commerce in those distant regions, the unequal and disadvantageous; and that a total persons, and the goods of our citizens were prorejection was preferable to the ratification of an ❘tected against those audacious pirates. One how instrument by which we made such mighty concessions. It was always my opinion, sir, that the statesman employed to negotiate on this occasion, was treated by public clamor with unmerited severity. He obtained a treaty from Great Britain, at that juncture, which, on the whole, answered our purposes exceedingly well, and was in reality more favorable to us than it probably would have been, had not the pressure of her affairs on the Continent of Europe induced her Ministers to be rather more conciliatory than usual. In the meantime the thirteen stripes were displayed with increasing frequency and numbers along the coasts of Europe. And such was the opinion of the three great maritime kingdoms, of their appearance, that, in 1794 and 1795, the cruisers of Spain, as well as of England and France, made captures of American vessels. They offered various pretexts for these acts. These chiefly referred to evasions of blockades, to the carrying of enemy's property, and to the coneealing or covering it by fraudulent invoices and papers. On the part of France, however, our affairs soon wore a serious aspect. Uncivil dispositions were working up to hostility. The resident Minister of the United States was recalled. and another sent in his stead. At length, after successive and fruitless attempts to accommodate the differences, during which marked disrespect had been shown to our Government and its Commissioners. Congress formally dissolved the existing treaty between the two nations, and authorized American vessels to cruise against those of France. This brings me to the year 1798, during which, and the time we were then embroiled, the British Government granted, for a stipulated sum, the protection of convoy to the merchant vessels of the United States. ever, more unwise and unjust than the rest, by the exorbitancy of his demands, drew on himself the vengeance of our nation. He had captured American vessels and doomed their officers and crews to slavery. A war with Tripoli was the consequence, and, at the expense of a million of dollars from the Treasury, our naval heroes compelled those sons of rapine to respect the rights of our nation, and restore to its wonted freedom the commerce of its citizens. In 1801, there was an occurrence which, though it happened in Denmark, was of evil augury in the eyes of neutral nations. And as forming a link in the chain of events it ought to be mentioned here. A project had been formed among the northern Powers of Europe to revive the Armed Neutrality, which had been originally conceived at St. Petersburg in 1780. A British fleet was sent to the Baltic Sound to dissolve it. A destructive cannonade of Copenhagen, was the consequence of Danish adherence to their principles. A wed by superior force, those brave asserters of their rights sunk into acquiescence. But the citizens of our own or of any neutral nation who consider this transaction in its true bearings and tendencies, will find it big with mischiefs to the weaker Powers that take no part in the neighboring wars. Anarmed neutrality, or an armed commerce, may be expected alike to impel the stronger belligerent to repress it as a measure of precaution, or to destroy it under a pretence of necessity. The peace of Amiens subsisted but a short year; for, in 1803, the recommencement of hostilities between France and Great Britain implicated in additional difficulties the foreign commerce of America. Our citizens persisted in their right to visit the ports of friendly nations. Our dispute with France had been terminated amicably by a treaty with the First Consul. The British Council, acting under a conviction that this trade was conducted in a manner that succored the enemy while it greatly incommoded themselves, determined that interference was necessary. Their cruisers seized American vessels trading with some of the French ports that were not blockaded, and their courts passed decrees of condemnation against ships with innocent cargoes on a return from ports to which they had carried contraband articles. This period of our commercial history, of which I am tracing this faint and imperfect outline, was distinguished by two remarkable events; oneemanating from an act of our own Legislature, and the other from the misconduct of a petty despot of Barbary. And they are worthy of notice as tending to display the course of our trade and navigation, and of the proceedings of the Government in relation to them. The voyages to Africa for slaves had long disgraced while it enriched several of the European nations. The profits of a traffic in which rum and baubles were to the future, a happy trait in the constitution of bartered away for negroes, allured our countrymen the human mind. They might with equal or a Moralists have sometimes considered blindness to embark in it. But, for the purpose of stopping with greater propriety have ascribed much of priso disgraceful and unprincipled an employment, vate and public felicity to a becoming degree of Congress enacted heavy penalties against it. And foresight. There was indeed little, very little of the commerce of people, which, as far as its a prophetic spirit wanting to satisfy us that our internal regulations extended had been universal, halcyon days were passing rapidly away, and a underwent a restriction which permanently proseason of privation and adversity would arise. hibited the trade to Guinea in human beings. The rich cargoes conveyed under our flag through the Mediterranean sea had often tempted the cupidity of the Deys and Beys ruling the inhabitants of its southern shore. By annual stipends, the subsidies paid by the Government for the protection of our The haughty nation that had terrified the Scandinavian thrones, next tormented the American coast. The Hudson, the Delaware, and the Chesapeake, had been annoyed by her squadrons of vigilance; ships both inward and outward bound had been captured and sent to Halifax. The trade SENATE. The Embargo. NOVEMBER, 1808. of New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, mostly composed with great ability; it seemed and Baltimore was sorely distressed at the very as if the merchants were in danger of total ruin. mouths of their harbors. Passengers and seamen Their situation was depicted as being deplorawere arbitrarily impressed, as the milder phrase is, but really kidnapped or made prisoners. Coasting vessels carrying the domestic produce of our country from one port to another, and in no respect concerned in foreign commerce, were fired upon, and one of their people killed. The national territory was violated, the service of writs to arrest some of these disorderly persons was resisted, the civil authority despised, and defied, and even the public vessels of the revenue assailed with shot. Conduct of this atrocious character was so imprudent and so reiterated, that the repeated appeals of the citizens to their Government, rendered it at length a case in which right blended with duty called upon Congress to act, and the result of these intolerable outrages was the statute for preserving peace in our own ports and harbors. In the ordinary intercourse of nations, such conduct would have amounted to war. It was indeed war; it was legitimate cause of war; nothing was required after such a severe blow given by them, but for us to return it, and the American would have entered the bloody amphitheatre to contend with the gladiators of Europe. But a pacific policy prevailed. The feeling of our people, smarting still under the wounds of the Revolution, and maintaining the doctrine that every citizen possesses, as an indefeasible inheritance, a portion of his country's sovereignty, was averse to contention in arms. On the part of France no reparation had been made for the heavy spoliations made upon our commerce by her cruisers, save the sum provided to be paid out of our own Treasury in satisfaction of them, by one of the conventions appurtenant to the treaty by which Louisiana was ceded to us. For the losses sustained by our merchants and underwriters, reparation had years before been sought for from Congress; but it had there been decided that losses in consequence of capture by a belligerent as well as by danger from the sea were to be borne by the concerned, and not to be considered as guarantied by the national Treasury. I now come to the year 1806, an eventful year to the foreign commerce of our people. An extravagant and armed trade had for a considerable time been carried on by some of our citizens with the emancipated or revolted blacks of Hayti. The French Minister, conformably to the instructions of his Government, remonstrated against this traffic as ungracious and improper; and under an impression that our citizens ought to be restrained from intercourse with the negroes of Hispaniola, Congress passed an act forbidding that altogether. This was the second time that our Government circumscribed the commercial conduct of its citizens. It was also during this year that memorials were forwarded to the executive and legislative branches of our Government by the merchants of our principal seaports, stating the vexations of their foreign commerce to be intolerable, and calling in the most earnest terms for relief or redress. These addresses were ble in the extreme. The interposition of their Government was asked in the most strenuous and pressing terms; and your table. Mr. President, was literally loaded with petitions. The chief cause of this distress was briefly this. These citizens of the United States were engaged during the war in Europe, in a commerce with enemies colonies' not open in time of peace; by this means, the produce of the French West Indies was conveyed under the neutral flag to the mother country. Great Britain opposed the direct commerce from the colony to France through the neutral bottom. The neutral then evaded the attempt against him by landing the colonial produce in his own country, and after having thus neutralized or naturalized it, exported it under drawback for Bordeaux or Marseilles; this proceeding was also opposed by the British, and much property was captured and condemned in executing their orders against it. Their writers justified their conduct by charging fraud upon the neutral flag, and declaring that under cover of them a "war in disguise" was carried on, while on our side the rights of neutrals were defended with great learning and ability in a most profound investigation of the subject. This Connected with these events, progressing from bad to worse, are some proceedings of the Senate, which I deem it necessary here to state. dignified body listened with peculiar attention to the complaints of the merchants. Their tale of sufferings excited a general sympathy. The most studious efforts were made for devising a plan of relief; at last it occurred that the peculiar organization of the Senate would enable it to pursue a course different from the ordinary routine of legislative business. In its executive capacity, the Senators were the Constitutional counsellors of the President as to treaties with foreign nations; and the Senate, influenced by a desire of removing the difficulties that were thickening around us, resolved to express their sense to the President upon that solemn occasion. After full consideration they framed two strong resolutions, which are recorded in your journal of that session; the one expressed indignant feelings at the aggressions made by the belligerents, and the other requested to demand restitution and reparation for the captures, condemnations, and impressments, they had committed. The members of the Senate were sent to communicate these resolutions to the President. It was my lot, sir, to be employed in that service, and I well remember the interview. What effect this conduct of the Senate produced in the mind of the President, it is impossible for me to say, but certain it is, that shortl shortly after, he nominated Mr. Pinkney as Envoy Extraordinary to England, and the Senate gave their advice and consent; and this important step was taken to appease mercantile uneasiness, and to remove obstructions to the freedom of commerce. This same year was ushered in by a proclamaNOVEMBER, 1808. The Embargo. SENATE. tion of General Ferrand, the French comman-month of November was distinguished by an order dant at St. Domingo, imposing vexations on the trade of our citizens; and a partial non-importation law was enacted against Great Britain by Congress about the middle of April. But these were not all the impediments which arose. Notices were given to the American Minister in London of several blockades. The chief of these was that of the coast, from the Elbe to Brest inclusire, in May. And here, as it occurs to me, may I mention, the spurious blockade of Curraçoa, under which numerous captures were made. And lastly, to complete the catalogue of disasters for 1806, and to close the woful climax, the French decree of Berlin came forth in November, and, as if sporting with the interests and feelings of Americans, proclaimed Great Britain and her progeny of isles to be in a state of blockade. Hopes had been entertained that such a violent and convulsed condition of society, would not be of long duration. Experience, however, soon proved that the infuriate rage of man was as yet unsatisfied, and had much greater lengths to go. For, early in the succeeding year (1807,) an order of the British Council was issued, by which the trade of neutrals, and of course of American citizens, was interdicted from the port of one belligerent to the port of another. And I in the ensuing May, the rivers Elbe, Weser, and Ems, with the interjacent coasts, were declared by them to be in a state of blockade, and a similar declaration was made on their part to neutrals in regard to the straits of the Dardenelles, and the city of Smyrna. But these were but subordinate incidents in this commercial drama; the catastrophe of the tragedy was soon to be developed. On the 22d of June, by a formal order from a British admiral, our frigate Chesapeake, leaving her port for a distant service, was attacked by one of these vessels, which had been lying in our harbors under the indulgence of hospitality, was disabled from proceeding, had several of her crew killed, and four taken away." Immediately the President by proclamation interdicted our harbors and waters to all British armed vessels, and forbade intercourse with them. Under an uncertainty how far hostilities were intended, and the town of Norfolk being threatened with an immediate attack, a sufficient force was ordered for the protection of that place and such other preparations commenced and pursued as the prospect rendered proper. In furtherance of these schemes, a proclamation was published, holding all their absent seamen to their allegiance, recalling them from foreign services, and denouncing heavy penalties for disobedience. The operation of this upon the American merchant service would have been very sensibly felt. Many British born subjects were in the employ of our merchants, and that very Govern retaliating on France a decree passed by her sometime before, declaring the sale of ships by belligerents to be illegal; and thus, by virtue of concurrent acts of these implacable enemies, the poor neutral found it impossible to purchase a ship either from a subject of Great Britain or of France. That season of gloom was famous, or rather infamous, for another act, prohibiting wholly the commerce of neutrals with the enemies of Great Britain, and for yet another, pregnant with the principles of lordly domination, on their part, and of colonial vassalage on our. by which the citizens of these independent and sovereign States are compelled to pay duties on their cargoes in British ports, and receive licenses under the authority of that Government, as a condition of being permitted to trade to any part of Europe in possession of her enemies. This outrageous edict on the part of Britain was succeeded by another on the side of France, equalling, or if possible, surpassing it in injustice. In December came forth the decree of Milan, enforcing the decree of Berlin against American trade; dooming to confiscation every vessel of the United States that had been boarded or even spoken to by a Briton, and encouraging, by the most unjustifiable lures, passengers and sailors to turn informers. The abominable mandate was quickly echoed in S Spain, and sanctioned by the approbation of His Most Catholic Majesty. It has been executed with shocking atrocity. In addition to other calamities, the property of neutrals has been sequestered in France, and their ships burned by her cruisers on the ocean. Such, Mr. President, was the situation of the European world, when Congress deemed it necessary to declare an embargo on our own vessels. Denmark and Prussia, and Russia, and Portugal, had become associated or allied with France; and, with the exception of Sweden, the conimerce of our citizens was prohibited, by the mutually vindictive and retaliating belligerents, from the White Sea to the Adriatic. American ships and cargoes were declared the prize and plunder of the contending Powers. The widely extended commerce of our people was to be crushed to atoms between the two mighty millstones, or prudently withdrawn from its dangerous exposure, and detained in safety at home. Policy and prudence dictated the latter measure. And as the ocean was become the scene of political storm and tempest, more dreadful than had ever agitated the physical elements, our citizens were admonished to partake of that security for their perand property, in the peaceful havens of their country, which they sought in vain on the high seas and in European harbors. The regulations, so destructive to our commerce, were not enacted by us. They were imposed upon us by foreign tythe question. In the shipwreck of our trade, all that remained for us to do, was to save as much as we could from perishing, and as far as our ef SODS tv.in ment which claimed as a British subject every rants. Congress had no volition, to vote upon American citizen who had been but two years a seamen in their service, refused to be bound by their own rule in relation to British subjects who had served an equal term on board the ships of the United States. But this was not all. The forts would go, to prevent a total loss. I touch, with a delicate hand, the mission of |