Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)United States. Congress
History
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 4 (of 16)
United States. Congress
Law -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
she was wont to get from us, that she might not be reduced to the
humiliating condition of making concession to induce us to repeal our
own law, and purchase an accommodation by telling us that we had a
weapon which we could wield to her annoyance. Mr. H. wished to know of
gentlemen if we had not experience enough to know that Great Britain
was not to be threatened into compliance by a rod of coercion? Let us
examine ourselves, said he, for if we trace our genealogy we shall find
that we descend from them; were they to use us in this manner, is there
an American that would stoop to them? I hope not; and neither will that
nation, from which we are descended, be driven from their position,
however erroneous, by threats.
This embargo, therefore, instead of operating on those nations which
had been violating our rights, was fraught with evils and privations
to the people of the United States. They were the sufferers. And have
we adopted the monkish plan of scourging ourselves for the sins of
others? He hoped not; and that, having made the experiment and found
that it had not produced its expected effect, they would abandon it, as
a measure wholly inefficient as to the objects intended by it, and as
having weakened the great hold which we had on Great Britain, from her
supposed dependence on us for raw materials.
Some gentlemen appeared to build up expectations of the efficiency
of this system by an addition to it of a non-intercourse law. Mr.
H. treated this as a futile idea. They should however examine it
seriously, and not, like children, shut their eyes to danger. Great
Britain was not the only manufacturing nation in Europe. Germany,
Holland, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, manufactured more or
less, and most of them had colonies, the exclusive supply of whose
manufactures they had heretofore reserved to themselves. While we
had enjoyed the carrying trade, we had supplied the deficiency in
navigation of those nations; and all the inconvenience felt for the
want of it ceased because we stepped in and aided them. This trade had
been cut up, and perhaps it was not a trade which the energies of the
nation should be embarked in defending. Who was there now to supply
all these various colonies that used to be supplied by us? None but
England, the sole mistress of the ocean. Whose products, then, would
Great Britain carry? Would she carry products of other nations, and let
her own manufacturers starve? No; and this exclusion from the colonies
of other manufactures, and leaving her merchants the sole carriers of
the world, produced a greater vent for her manufactures than the whole
quantity consumed in the United States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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