commerce was open with them all except France and Great Britain and their dependencies. Mr. QUINCY.--Mr. Chairman, I am not, in general, a friend to abstract legislation. Ostentatious declaration of general principles is so often the resort of weakness and of ignorance, it is so frequently the subterfuge of men who are willing to amuse, or who mean to delude the people, that it is with great reluctance I yield to such a course my sanction. If, however, a formal denunciation of a determination to perform one of the most common and undeniable of national duties, be deemed by a majority of this House essential to their character, or to the attainment of public confidence, I am willing to admit that the one now offered is as unexceptionable as any it would be likely to propose. In this view, however, I lay wholly out of sight the report of the committee by which it is accompanied and introduced. The course advocated in that report is, in my opinion, loathsome; the spirit it breathes disgraceful; the temper it is likely to inspire neither calculated to regain the rights we have lost, nor to preserve those which remain to us. It is an established maxim, that in adopting a resolution offered by a committee in this House, no member is pledged to support the reasoning, or made sponsor for the facts which they have seen fit to insert in it. I exercise, therefore, a common right, when I subscribe to the resolution, not on the principles of the committee, but on those which obviously result from its terms, and are the plain meaning of its expressions. I agree to this resolution, because, in my apprehension, it offers a solemn pledge to this nation--a pledge not to be mistaken, and not to be evaded--that the present system of public measures shall be totally abandoned. Adopt it, and there is an end of the policy of deserting our rights, under pretence of maintaining them. Adopt it, and we can no longer yield, at the beck of haughty belligerents, the right of navigating the ocean, that choice inheritance bequeathed to us by our fathers. Adopt it, and there is a termination of that base and abject submission, by which this country has for these eleven months been disgraced, and brought to the brink of ruin. That the natural import and necessary implication of the terms of this resolution are such as I have suggested, will be apparent from a very transient consideration. What do its terms necessarily include? They contain an assertion and a pledge. The assertion is, that the edicts of Great Britain and France are contrary to our rights, honor, and independence. The pledge is, that we will not submit to them.